Agence France Presse — English
January 1, 2005 Saturday 1:16 AM GMT

Ukraine’s Yushchenko, Georgian leader ring in New Year after PM
resigns

KIEV

Ukraine opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko rang in the New Year with
Georgia’s leader early Saturday in central Kiev, hours after Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovich resigned and all but admitted losing a
presidential rerun vote.

In an appearance sure to irritate Russia, Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili joined Yushchenko in hailing Ukraine’s “orange
revolution,” which followed Tbilisi’s “rose” uprising last year.

“This is a triumph of good over evil,” a beaming Saakashvili said in
Ukrainian to some 100,000 people gathered in Kiev’s central
Independence Square, the epicenter of the “orange” protests that he
fervently supported, albeit in private.

“I am a president and because of my official position I couldn’t come
here, but my heart was on Khreshchatik (Kiev’s main thoroughfare)…
I must say that these last few days I have felt like a native of
Kiev,” said Saakashvili, who attended university in the city.

“I wish you a happy new year with your new president,” he said. “You
have a super president, he is a good friend of mine and a great
politician.”

For his part Yushchenko said: “Ukrainians have been independent for
13 years but now they are free,” a few moments before midnight when
fireworks exploded over the Kiev sky.

The celebration came hours after Yushchenko’s pro-Russia electoral
rival Yanukovich resigned from his post and said that his appeals
over the historic December 26 vote were unlikely to be granted.

“I have made a decision and am formally submitting my resignation,”
Yanukovich said in a televised address. “I find it impossible to
occupy any post in a government headed by these authorities.”

But Yanukovich stopped short of conceding defeat in the poll, which
would have brought Ukraine’s six-week election saga to an end.

“Concerning the election results, we are keeping up the fight but I
don’t have much hope for a just decision from the central election
commission and the supreme court,” he said.

Yanukovich repeated his assertion that “external forces” were
responsible for his defeat in the December 26 vote.

But he got no support from Ukraine’s outgoing President Leonid
Kuchma, who called on the nation during his New Year address to
“accept the democratic choice” made in the presidential poll.

Ukraine’s “orange revolution” marked the second year in a row that
peaceful protests headed by a Western-leaning leader swept out a
Russia-friendly regime in an ex-Soviet nation.

Moscow has accused the United States of fomenting the unrest in order
to install allies in its strategic backyard, charges that Washington
has denied.

But opposition movements in authoritarian-leaning former Soviet
republics and Russia have hailed the peaceful uprisings and in the
heat of the “orange” demonstrations, Belarussians, Armenians, Azeris
and Russians mingled with Ukrainian protestors in central Kiev.

Earlier Friday, Saakashvili was mobbed by hundreds of wildly cheering
opposition supporters as he walked through a tent city in central
Kiev set up in Yushchenko’s support after he refused to concede
defeat to Yanukovich in a November 21 runoff because of fraud.

“I didn’t have a chance to officially support you, but during your
victory I once again felt myself a Kievite,” said Saakashvili, who
attended university in the Ukrainian capital.

“Georgia’s revolution has been considerably strengthened by Ukraine’s
‘orange revolution,’ which will drive important changes in all of
former Soviet territory,” he said in an appearance on Ukrainian
pro-opposition television last week.

The mass opposition demonstrations led to the annulment of a November
presidential runoff election due to massive fraud, remade Ukraine
into a de facto parliamentary republic and led to a historic rerun
vote on December 26, which Yushchenko won by more than 2.2 million
votes.

If Yanukovich chooses to continue with his appeals over the results
of the vote, which he contends was marked with irregularities,
Yushchenko’s official confirmation as the winner could be put off for
weeks as the legal wrangling drags on.

Russia, which openly backed Yanukovich ahead of the poll, has blasted
the West for what it called interference in Ukraine’s internal
matters and warned that peaceful revolutions like those in Kiev and
Tbilisi could destabilize the region.

“If you have permanent revolutions you risk plunging the post-Soviet
space into endless conflict,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said
days ahead of Ukraine’s rerun vote.