Ukraine Deal Favors Ex-Premier’s Return

After months of tough negotiations, pro-Western parties that led Ukraine’s Orange Revolution reached agreement Wednesday on restoring a coalition that would return former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to power.

“We won democracy for Ukraine by approving this decision today,” Tymoshenko told parliament as she and other coalition leaders announced the agreement.

The country’s new parliament faces a Saturday deadline to approve the deal, which could still fall apart because of tensions within the coalition. But representatives of Tymoshenko’s bloc and two other leading groups initialed the 103-page agreement Wednesday afternoon. It was due to go today to the 450-seat parliament. The three blocs, which emerged from the 2004 Orange Revolution, hold 243 seats.

A majority of the parliament, which was elected in March, must support a coalition and a prime minister for a new government to take office.

Tymoshenko was a key leader in the 2004 street protests against electoral fraud that ultimately forced a repeat presidential runoff that brought her ally, President Viktor Yushchenko, to power. Tymoshenko served as his prime minister until the two had a falling out in September.

Tymoshenko’s supporters see her as a leader who would fight Ukraine’s endemic corruption. A restored Orange coalition with her as prime minister would push the country toward closer ties with Europe and the United States, including possible membership in the European Union and NATO. Such a coalition also would help ensure the continued development of democracy in the former Soviet state, backers say.

In the March 26 parliamentary elections, the Party of Regions -- led by Yushchenko’s opponent in the 2004 runoff election, Viktor Yanukovich -- finished with the most seats, but not enough to form a parliamentary majority.

Vitaly Chepinoga, a spokesman for Tymoshenko, said in a phone interview from Kiev, the capital, that the coalition agreement stipulated that her bloc could choose the prime minister, and Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine, another party to the agreement, could pick the speaker of parliament. The Socialists, the third bloc to sign the deal, will name the first deputy prime minister.

Throughout the negotiations, Tymoshenko’s bloc has made it clear that she was its choice for prime minister.

“Yulia Tymoshenko will become Ukraine’s prime minister,” Chepinoga said.

But not all observers and players agreed that the deal was certain to be carried out.

“Such a coalition will not gather the signatures of 226 deputies,” Yanukovich told journalists at parliament Wednesday, according to a Ukrainian news agency.

Uncertainty was fanned by Our Ukraine’s surprise decision Wednesday to nominate Petro Poroshenko, a wealthy businessman and ex-chief of the National Security and Defense Council, for the parliamentary speaker’s position. A bitter clash in September between Tymoshenko and Poroshenko, in which they and their allies traded charges of corruption and incompetence, led to the breakup of the coalition and Tymoshenko’s ouster from the prime minister’s post.

Vadim Karasyov, director of the Institute for Global Strategies, a Kiev think tank, said in a telephone interview that Poroshenko’s nomination could lead to the deal falling apart.

“It is clear that even if Tymoshenko agrees to this, it will be much more difficult for her to become a strong prime minister with Poroshenko leading the parliament,” he said.

Karasyov said the parties that grew out of the Orange Revolution had already suffered a serious blow to their popularity by taking so long to work out an agreement. He added, however, that the coalition still had a chance to be effective.

“Tymoshenko is a strong politician and she will be a strong prime minister,” he said. “This job is not new to her.... The Orange alliance will help Ukraine to move further on the road of democratic reconstruction, on the road to Europe, to European principles and values.”

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Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.