Ukraine opposition eggs on protests after parliament setback

Kiev (AFP) - Ukraine's opposition called Tuesday for sustained pressure from the street after days of protests that have plunged the country into its biggest crisis in nearly a decade, as the government survived a no-confidence vote in parliament.

Incensed by an 11-hour U-turn on a deal for closer ties with the European Union, thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets last month and are now demanding President Viktor Yanukovych's resignation.

The weekend witnessed Ukraine's largest protests since the 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution and around 30,000 were back in the street in central Kiev on Tuesday evening.

"I am calling on you not to give up," boxing champion turned opposition leader Vitali Klitschko told the protesters after the government survived the no-confidence vote.

The motion mustered only 186 of the 226 votes required to pass.

With Yanukovych's Regions Party in control of parliament, the motion always looked doomed but the opposition has been seeking to keep the initiative.

The opposition initially wanted Yanukovych to sign the pact they hoped would tie Ukraine's future to the EU and shake the yoke of its old master Russia.

But his failure to ink the deal in Vilnius on Friday and a violent police crackdown on demonstrators the following day turned the protests into a drive for regime change.

Yanukovych, who left the country on a three-day visit to China Tuesday, has admitted the police "went too far" at the weekend and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov also offered an apology.

"I will draw firm conclusions from what happened and make serious personnel changes in the government," he said.

Smoke bombs and stun grenades were used when police confronted some of the 100,000 people who poured onto the streets of Kiev Sunday to demand snap elections.

Several dozen people were injured.

On Monday, thousands of demonstrators took control of Kiev's iconic Independence Square, the focal point of the Orange Revolution, and the opposition called for a nationwide strike.

'Need for immediate dialogue'

As the opposition made its call, Azarov said a Ukrainian delegation would travel to Brussels on Wednesday for further talks on the trade pact.

"We will pursue negotiations that will allow us to sign a European integration agreement on advantageous terms for Ukraine," he said in a government statement posted online.

Azarov said a separate delegation would travel to Russia for trade talks Wednesday.

"We want to strengthen our strategic partnership with the Russian Federation," he said in a statement.

But former president and Orange Revolution co-leader Viktor Yushchenko argued that the authorities urgently needed to sit down for talks with the opposition.

"We must immediately call together a roundtable and the initiative must come from the president and the opposition," he said in comments broadcast on a Russian opposition channel.

"The situation could spiral out of control in the next few days."

NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels Tuesday also urged "the government and the opposition to engage in dialogue and launch a reform process."

Ukraine is a partner of NATO, the military alliance formed in the Cold War to counter the Soviet Union.

Moscow trumped the EU deal with a mixture of threats and inducements but, speaking on television Monday, Yanukovych defended his decision.

"What kind of an agreement is that when they take and bend us over?" he said.

The EU had set the release of Yanukovych's top rival Yulia Tymoshenko, who in 2011 was sentenced to seven years on abuse-of-power charges, as a key condition.

'More like pogrom than revolution'

The opposition charges Yanukovych wants to keep the figurehead of the Orange Revolution out of the game until the 2015 presidential elections.

Opposition leaders including Klitschko and former economic minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk say the government betrayed the Ukrainian people by balking after years of negotiations.

They hope to turn Ukrainians' anger over corruption and economic woes into a new "revolution".

Economists have warned the new turmoil could exacerbate economic troubles.

The political crisis has seen prices on Ukrainian bonds drop sharply in the past few days on fears that a breakdown of aid and trade negotiations with the West may force the cash-strapped government to default on its debts and sharply devalue the currency.

"With the economy already in recession and suffering from strains in the balance of payments, prolonged political instability could tip Ukraine into a crisis," the London-based Capital Economics consultancy said.

Both the Ukrainian government and Russia have attacked the protests as neither legitimate nor representative.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who wants to pull Ukraine into a Moscow-led customs union, said late Monday that protests "seem more like a pogrom than a revolution".

Azarov for his part on Monday said the situation bore the hallmarks of a "coup d'etat".

The United States and France challenged that statement. "We certainly don't consider peaceful demonstrations coup attempts," said White House spokesman Jay Carney in Washington.

"This is not a coup d'etat. I haven't seen a military intervention," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.