Ukraine’s Leader Ducks Blows From All Directions

Buffeted by charges that he personally authorized an illegal weapons shipment to Iraq two years ago, Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma on Tuesday also had to contend with a coterie of opposition lawmakers and about 5,000 protesters camping outside his office demanding his early resignation.

But Kuchma slipped out a side door and likewise seemed prepared to fend off the latest calls for his ouster, just as he has off and on for the last year.

Early today, about 50 of the opposition parliament members remained on the second and third floors of the presidential administration building and said they were going on a hunger strike. Kuchma was reported by the Russian news agency Itar-Tass to be considering meeting with them.

In spite of popular rage over a failing economy, allegations that Kuchma may have been behind the slaying of a journalist and frustration that a victory in last year’s parliamentary election has not increased the opposition’s power, Kuchma’s opponents so far have failed to bring things to a critical pitch that would lead to his ouster.

But a new allegation that a secret tape recording captured Kuchma approving the clandestine sale of Ukraine’s new Kolchuga radar system to Iraq seemed to raise the likelihood of renewed U.S. pressure on the president.

At issue is the fate of Ukraine, a country slightly larger than France on the eastern fringe of Europe that the United States was hoping to bring into the community of democracies after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over the last 10 years, its economic development has stalled and Kuchma, in office since 1994, has shown signs of increasingly authoritarian rule.

About 5,000 people in Kiev marched under cold and cloudy skies Tuesday to parliament, chanting, “Kuchma out!” Their flags represented the chief opposition parties: red for the Communists, pink for the Socialists, white for the centrist Our Ukraine, and blue, yellow and maroon for the anti-corruption Yulia Tymoshenko bloc, named for the former deputy prime minister who is one of Kuchma’s most scathing critics.

“The level of confrontation is rising with every day, and we are entering into a deep political crisis that Ukraine has not seen in 11 years of independence,” said former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, the leader of Our Ukraine and the leading rival to Kuchma, who has veered between open challenges to the president and pleas for dialogue.

“The essence of the crisis is simple: People voted for certain people, but the authorities appoint others,” Yushchenko said.

Tymoshenko, meanwhile, reiterated the call for Kuchma’s impeachment that she has been making since early last year. “The main thing that is happening here is that a minority, an absolute minority [pro-Kuchma parties] has created a majority and continues to run the country under Kuchma’s roof,” she said.

The protests Tuesday followed a rally of at least 20,000 protesters Sept. 16.

Tuesday’s demonstrations coincided with an announcement by the U.S. State Department that it was reexamining its policy toward Ukraine and “particularly toward President Kuchma.”

Officials said about $54 million in U.S. aid to Ukraine had been temporarily suspended pending the review.

The action came after American officials concluded that a July 2000 recording implicating Kuchma in helping Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was authentic.

The audiotape records a voice, identified as Kuchma’s, authorizing a secret shipment of Ukrainian-made high-technology radar equipment to Iraq.

The tape was part of a series of recordings allegedly made secretly in Kuchma’s office by a disgruntled presidential bodyguard.

Another of the tapes, revealed earlier, seemed to implicate Kuchma in a plan to abduct and intimidate journalist and government critic Georgi Gongadze two years ago. Gongadze was subsequently found slain, and Kuchma’s critics suspect that state security agents carried out the killing.

In the tape about weapons transfers, purportedly recorded July 10, 2000, Kuchma is allegedly heard talking to an arms export official and giving a green light for sending a radar system to Iraq that would make it possible for Iraqi ground stations to monitor U.S. flights without being detected.

Kuchma’s press office Tuesday denied the allegations of assisting Hussein. “Ukraine is prepared to give all information and is open to all competent international organizations, including U.S. experts on this issue,” it said in a statement. “The president has repeated that Ukraine did not trade weapons or military technology with Iraq.”

According to a transcript, Valery Malev, who was in charge of the Ukrainian agency for arms exporting, said to Kuchma: “There is a need for a special operation. We were approached by Iraq through our Jordanian intermediary. They want to buy four Kolchuga stations and offer $100 million right away.”

He suggested using crates that would disguise the shipment, according to the transcript.

The transcript gives this reply from Kuchma: “OK. Go ahead.”

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Times staff writer Daniszewski reported from Moscow and special correspondent Mycio from Kiev.