KIEV, April 18 (RIA Novosti, Vladimir Suprun) - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said Tuesday he was concerned that potential partners in a parliamentary coalition were wasting time in quarrels instead of working out a positive action plan.
The presidential press service said Yushchenko had called on politicians to drop blackmail and ultimatums as this "harms building relations of trust between the participants of the future coalition."
It quoted the president as saying that coalition participants were not hurrying to work out a real program of action, spending much time and effort on mutual insults and sorting out their relations through mass media instead.
Yushchenko said he was ready to cooperate with both the future majority and opposition.
In the March 26 parliamentary election the pro-Russian Party of Regions, led by former prime minister and presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, won 186 seats in the 450-seat Supreme Rada, or parliament.
The bloc led by former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko finished second with 129 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.
A tentative coalition agreement has been signed but little progress has been made, mostly due to a debate on the name of the country's new prime minister, who is getting additional powers at the expense of the president according to a constitutional reform which comes into force with the new legislature.
Tymoshenko said Monday she had banned her bloc members from any type of cooperation with Yanukovych and his party. "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.
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.
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.
