Yushchenko blames government for poisoning

OPPOSITION leader Viktor Yushchenko said yesterday that he was sure he was poisoned by the Ukrainian government and believes it most likely happened at a dinner he had with the country’s top security service officials.

Mr Yushchenko’s comments, made in an interview with The Associated Press, were the first time he pinpointed when and where he believed he was poisoned with dioxin. He said it likely happened at a September 5 dinner with the head of the Ukrainian security service, Ihor Smeshko, and his deputy, Volodymyr Satsyuk.

“That was the only place where no one from my team was present and no precautions were taken concerning the food,” he said. “It was a project of political murder, prepared by the authorities.”

A parliamentary commission that investigated Mr Yushchenko’s mysterious illness in October said he had complained of pains - including a headache about three hours after the meal and an acute stomach ache the next day - after meeting with Smeshko. The commission, however, also listed other places he ate or drank that day.

Mr Yushchenko, who was disfigured by poisoning, said that Ukrainian prosecutors were looking into the case and said he was confident the official culprits would be punished.

It’s possible that Mr Yushchenko did not eat all of the poisoned meal and so escaped death by accident, but it’s also possible that dioxin was chosen because it is recognised as a crippling poison that normally doesn’t kill, scientists say.

Speaking on other subjects, Yushchenko criticised Russia’s involvement in the Ukrainian campaign as “interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine.

He said, however, that if he wins the December 26 presidential rerun, he would make efforts to turn a new page in relations with Russia, which heavily backed his rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

“Russia is our eternal neighbour, a strategic neighbour,” he said. “We must always have excellent relations with it. My government will do everything possible, everything I can, to achieve this.”

At the same time, he said Ukraine would move to integrate more closely into European structures.