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Ukrainian parliament adjourned till April 17

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Ukraine's parliament, the Supreme Rada, has adjourned until April 17, but the deputies are ready to meet at any moment if required, a senior MP said Friday.
KIEV, April 6 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine's parliament, the Supreme Rada, has adjourned until April 17, but the deputies are ready to meet at any moment if required, a senior MP said Friday.

Closing Friday's session, First Deputy Speaker Oleksandr Martynyuk warned the MPs to be ready to meet, if need be, for an emergency plenary session.

MPs will work in committees and party factions next week.

At its session Wednesday, the Supreme Rada adopted a resolution making it incumbent on the deputies to meet for an emergency session within 15 minutes.

Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych have met to discuss ways of overcoming the ongoing political crisis, the Ukrainian presidential press service reported Friday.

Ukraine's political crisis can only be resolved through compromise, Rada Speaker Oleksandr Moroz said.

"There are several ways out of the situation, but in any event, it can only be based on compromise," he said.

"If the president revokes his decree, we will revoke the parliament resolution," Moroz said.

Ukraine's ruling coalition, at the center of a political brawl with the president and opposition over its expansion, will return to its original lineup, a member of the largest party in parliament said.

"We have just voted at a coalition meeting to return to the original lineup," said Vasiliy Kisilev of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions, which leads the parliamentary coalition.

Political tensions in the ex-Soviet state intensified after 11 lawmakers defected to the coalition, bringing it closer to a 300-seat constitutional majority in the 450-member Supreme Rada with the ability to override presidential vetoes.

Yushchenko has since ordered the dissolution of the Supreme Rada and called early elections May 27, but lawmakers have defied the order, saying they will wait for a Constitutional Court ruling on the matter.

Kisilev said the coalition would again number 238 people, including 186 members of the Party of Regions, 21 Communists and 31 Socialists.

He said the lawmakers who quit pro-presidential Our Ukraine bloc and the opposition Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc would remain in parliament outside any factions and would vote independently.

"We have taken care of the issue, since it evoked a negative reaction from the president, and have taken a step toward the president," Kisilev said.

Yushchenko, who has accused the coalition of reneging on a power-sharing arrangement and violating the Constitution, refused Thursday to retract his decree dissolving parliament and threatened to press criminal charges against officials defying his orders.

In another concession to the president earlier Friday, the legislature backed the Yushchenko-sponsored bill allowing foreign troops to take part in joint exercises on Ukrainian soil in 2007.

The Supreme Rada voted 237-23 for the bill, which was turned down Wednesday, when the legislature also passed an array of resolutions in defiance of other presidential decrees, including one ordering the government to withhold funding for new elections.

The deadline the National Security Council set for the Cabinet of Ministers to release funding runs out on Saturday.

The bill authorizes the presence of Russian, Slovak, Belgian, U.S. and other NATO troops in Ukraine, which will host five international exercises later this year, including Sea Breeze in July-August.

Yushchenko has pushed to integrate his country into NATO and the European Union. The Russia-friendly Yanukovych has been cagey on the issue of integration. The two have locked horns in a power struggle since Yanukovych's party won the March 2006 parliamentary elections.

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