KIEV, April 17 (RIA Novosti, Vladimir Suprun) - Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko said Monday she had banned the bloc she headed at last month's parliamentary elections from cooperation with the party that won the vote.
"Any talks on cooperation, support or deals with the Party of Regions are unacceptable, even if the [Tymoshenko] faction has to go into opposition," the bloc's press service said.
Tymoshenko said that anyone caught defying the ban would be expelled from the bloc with immediate effect.
The Tymoshenko bloc finished second in the March 26 ballot with 22.29% of the vote, giving it 129 seats in the 450-seat Supreme Rada, or parliament. The elections were won by the pro-Russian Party of Regions, led by former prime minister and presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, which took 31.14% of the vote for 186 seats.
Tymoshenko has been pushing the formation of an "orange" coalition in the new parliament to include her bloc, the pro-presidential Our Ukraine bloc and the Socialist Party, and has vehemently opposed any attempts to expand the coalition by including the Party of Regions.
Under the Ukrainian Constitution, the Rada must form a coalition majority within 30 days of the new parliament starting work, and appoint a new government and pick a new prime minister in the next 30 days. Tymoshenko said earlier that her bloc would only join a coalition if she were appointed prime minister.
President Viktor Yushchenko dismissed Tymoshenko and her government in September 2005 after a clash that saw Tymoshenko's ministers and several members of the president's inner circle trade allegations of corruption.
