Ukrainian presidential candidate, Batkivschyna party leader Yulia Tymoshenko has handed over a protocol of mutual understanding to the activists who occupied the Donetsk regional administration building and expressed the hope they will sign the document drawn up with due account of their demands and vacate the building.
A report posted on the Batkivschyna Web site said the protocol’s
signatories would be the Batkivschyna party and the group of individuals
occupying the building of the Donetsk regional administration.
The protocol read out by Tymoshenko in Donetsk calls for the
restoration of civil peace and tranquility, the Ukrainian unity and
territorial integrity, an independent, fair, socially oriented and
law-governed state and a broad national dialogue tasked to resolve
regional problems and to remove disagreements between regions and the
center.
The sides undertake the following commitments.
Batkivschyna also undertakes to initiate constitutional amendments or
power decentralization, for instance, through financial independence of
local communities.
Another commitment of Batkivschyna is to liquidate regional and
district administrations in the course of the constitutional process and
to hand over their powers to the elected heads and executive committees
of regional and district councils, Tymoshenko underscored.
According to the protocol, Batkivschyna will submit to the parliament
and support a bill amnestying all peaceful protesters but the persons
who have committed grave crimes.
In return, the protesters undertake to vacate the Donetsk regional
administration building, to give civil servants free access to their
offices and to let public utility workers clean the building and its
surroundings.
The protocol compels the protesters to lay down all unregistered and illegal weapons immediately and voluntarily.
The document mentions the commitment to abstain from the illegal use
of force and to resolve sociopolitical problems peacefully in a national
dialogue.
“We need to reach mutual understanding between the central
authorities and citizens who live in the east and in the west. I very
much want this understanding to be reached peacefully, especially in the
light of the Geneva accords. I do not want Ukrainian citizens on both
sides to have casualties, and I will be working on results,” Tymoshenko
stated.
