The 450-seat Supreme Rada adopted a decision earlier Tuesday to invite Viktor Yushchenko to attend a session, due 4 p.m. local time (1 p.m. GMT), and parliamentary Speaker Oleksandr Moroz said a written invitation would be sent to the president. A source in parliament also said the president planned to receive faction leaders Tuesday to discuss the formation of a government or a dissolution of parliament.
But Irina Gerashchenko told a news briefing, "Neither meetings, nor discussions with the leaders of parliamentary factions were planned yesterday or today."
Under the constitution, Yushchenko can dissolve parliament and fix new elections from Tuesday, the deadline for the assembly to form a government, which came 60 days after its first sitting.
But Yushchenko has so far failed to approve last Tuesday's nomination of his former presidential rival Viktor Yanukovych, whose largely pro-Russian Party of Regions leads a new coalition majority in parliament after the collapse of a West-leaning alliance.
The 125-seat eponymous bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko, Yushchenko's flamboyant ally in the late 2004 mass protests that brought him to power and previous premier-in-waiting in the first post-election coalition, formally withdrew from the assembly Monday in a bid to force the president to announce a rerun and block the rival coalition's way to power.
