Minister orders troops out of Kiev

Ukrainian Interior Minister Vasily Tsushko ordered members of the elite police force Berkut to leave the capital Kiev and return to their bases on Sunday.

The order came as Ukraine's rival leaders hailed a hard-won agreement on a September date for early parliamentary elections.

The agreement has seemingly resolved a persistent political crisis that had threatened to escalate into violent confrontation.

The deal was seen as a draw for the feuding President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, but many uncertainties remain, such as who controls key law enforcement agencies and whether the fractious parliament will continue working ahead of the vote.

While the agreement marked a pause in the power struggle between Yushchenko and Yanukovych, it set the stage for a new election campaign likely to be driven by the same divisions that have marked more than two years of political turbulence in the ex-Soviet republic.

The standoff between the 2004 Orange Revolution rivals escalated sharply in April when Yushchenko ordered the legislature dissolved and called for new elections.

Yanukovych later agreed to an early vote but the leaders bickered over the date, with Yushchenko pressing for a swift election and Yanukovych saying it could not take place until autumn.

''I want to say one more time that it was not us who initiated those elections. And if this issue is being raised in this unconditional way, we, as law-abiding people, will go to the elections,'' Yanukovych told a crowd of supporters.

The crisis deepened further last week after Yushchenko fired the prosecutor general, a Yanukovych ally, and the troops he sent to evict the official found riot police loyal to the prime minister on hand to thwart them.
Yushchenko then asserted control over the nation's 32,000 Interior Ministry troops and ordered several thousand officers to the capital on Saturday, but most appeared to have been blocked outside Kiev by forces loyal to Yanukovych.

After more than eight hours of tense deliberations that dragged on deep into the night, the leaders announced an agreement early Sunday to hold the vote on Sept. 30 - a decision both hailed as a compromise.

Yanukovych said the leaders agreed that the country of 47 million could not be allowed to slide into violence and that such political crises should be avoided in the future.

Analysts said the deal represented a victory and a concession for both leaders, with Yanukovych agreeing to an early vote and Yushchenko conceding to hold it later than he had planned.

The agreement also calls for laws allowing Yanukovych's party to place representatives on the Central Election Commission - a major concern ahead of the vote.

It stipulates that parliament will be dissolved and the new election formally called on the president's order - not parliament's initiative - strengthening the hand of the increasingly sidelined Yushchenko and setting a potentially crucial precedent.