World

KIEV — Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich went on sick leave on Thursday after a bruising session of parliament, leaving a political vacuum in a country threatened with bankruptcy and destabilised by anti-government protests.

The 63-year-old president appears increasingly isolated in a crisis born of a tug-of-war between the West and Ukraine’s former Soviet overlord Russia. A former president said this week the violence between demonstrators and police had brought the country to the brink of civil war.

Shortly after his office announced he had developed a high temperature and acute respiratory ailment, Yanukovich defended his record in handling the crisis and accused the opposition, which is demanding his resignation, of provoking the unrest.

“We have fulfilled all the obligations which the authorities took on themselves,” a presidential statement said, referring to a bill passed late on Wednesday granting a conditional amnesty for activists who had been detained.

“However, the opposition continues to whip up the situation, calling on people to stand in the cold for the sake of the political ambitions of a few leaders.”

The amnesty offered freedom from prosecution to peaceful protesters, but only on condition that activists left official buildings they have occupied — something they have rejected.

Several members of Yanukovich’s own party voted against the bill, even after he visited parliament himself to rally support, and some of his powerful industrialist backers are showing signs of impatience with the two-month-old crisis.

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov resigned on Tuesday after a sharp escalation of the street unrest, which began in November when Yanukovich rejected a European Union deal in favour of closer ties and a bailout deal with Russia.

The president, under pressure from Moscow not to tilt policy back towards the West, has yet to appoint a successor. Serhiy Arbuzov, Azarov’s first deputy and a close family friend of Yanukovich, has stepped in as interim prime minister.

“The president of Ukraine has been officially registered as sick, with an acute respiratory ailment and a high temperature,” a statement on the presidential website said.

A subsequent statement gave fullsome tribute to a police officer who was found dead early on Thursday, apparently from a heart attack while on duty — an indication of how important Yanukovich regards keeping the security forces on his side.

Breathing space?

The bare announcement on his health gave no sign of when he might be back at his desk or able to appoint a new government, which Moscow says must be in place before it goes ahead with a planned purchase of $2 billion of Ukrainian government bonds.

“Today is the first day of the illness. He has a high temperature. We are not doctors, but it is clear that a high temperature does not go down in a single day,” a presidential spokesman said by telephone. “The doctors will do all they can so that he can recover quickly.”

Some opposition figures said they suspected Yanukovich might be giving himself breathing space after being forced into concessions to try to calm the unrest on the streets.

“This smacks of a ‘diplomatic illness’,” Rostislav Pavlenko, a member of boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko’s Udar (Punch) Party, told Reuters. “It allows Yanukovich not to sign laws, not to meet the opposition, absent himself from decisions to solve the political crisis.”

A close ally of Yanukovich, who was last seen in parliament on Wednesday night, rejected that interpretation.

The president had hurried to the legislature to herd supporters into voting for the amnesty bill. Mykhailo Chechetov, from Yanukovich’s Party of Regions, said the president had told supporters there he had come to the session directly from hospital. “He looked ill,” Chechetov said.

Photographs released by the presidential press service of Yanukovich holding talks with a European Union delegation earlier in the day revealed no obvious signs of illness.

Urgent tasks

In a statement the three main opposition leaders, including Klitschko, accused Yanukovich of ignoring violations of voting procedure in the Wednesday night vote.

“Viktor Yanukovich bears responsibility for the violations of constitutional norms... [he] personally went to parliament and by blackmail and intimidation forced his faction, which is balanced on the edge of a split, to go back in and push through a law even when there were not enough votes for it,” they said.

Thirty-year-old Ruslan Andriyko, one of the hundreds of protesters occupying Kiev’s City Hall, said it would not work.

“We will clear this building only if we get the resignation of Yanukovich, which is the main aim of our revolution, and the approval of the people on the ‘Maidan’ [Kiev’s Independence Square],” he said.

The president has not had a history of ill health. He has full control over the government and still has solid backing in parliament but there are signs of discontent in his Party of Regions over the continuing crisis on the streets.

He replaced his long-standing head of administration in mid-January and has since sacked his press secretary.

Former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski said he believed the hasty visit to parliament was a sign Yanukovich, who he has met many times, was afraid of losing support.

“I think this urgent visit by the president to parliament shows he is afraid that the majority is no longer on his side,” Kwasniewski said on Polish radio.

Ukraine’s richest entrepreneurs, whose support Yanukovich has had and needs now, are now taking a more neutral line.

Chemical and gas billionaire Dmitry Firtash called on all sides in the conflict to find a compromise by negotiations that would yield “real” results, according to a statement from him on Thursday. Ukraine’s richest man, steel magnate Rinat Akhmetov, made a similar appeal earlier this week.

Yanukovich’s most urgent task now is to appoint a successor to Azarov, who served him loyally for four years, while the opposition is anxious that he also signs into force a repeal of anti-protest legislation.

Ukraine badly needs a new government. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday Moscow would wait until one was formed before fully implementing the $15 billion bailout deal.

The cost of insuring Ukraine’s debt against default rose to a new one month high on Thursday, and Ukraine’s central bank intervened for a fourth successive day, offering dollars on the inter-bank market to prevent a serious slide in the national currency, the hryvnia, from its peg at around eight to the dollar.

The statistics agency said the economy, dominated by steel exports, had ground to a halt in 2013. Analysts expect output to fall this year.

Six people have been killed and hundreds have been injured in street battles between anti-government demonstrators and police which escalated sharply after the authorities toughened their response. The police officer who died on the street on Wednesday night took the death toll to seven.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to bypass a divided Congress and take action on his own to bolster America’s middle class in a State of the Union address that he used to try to breathe new life into his second term after a troubled year.

Standing in the House of Representatives chamber before lawmakers, Supreme Court justices and VIP guests, Obama declared his independence from Congress by unveiling a series of executive orders and decisions — moves likely to inflame already tense relations between the Democratic president and Republicans.

While his rhetoric was high flying, Obama’s actions were relatively modest, collectively amounting to an outpouring of frustration at the pace of legislative action with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and able to slow the president’s agenda.

“I’m eager to work with all of you,” Obama told the lawmakers gathered for the annual speech. “But America does not stand still — and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Obama’s orders included a wage hike for federal contract workers, creation of a “starter savings account” to help millions of people save for retirement and plans to establish new fuel efficiency standards for trucks.

He said he was driven to act by the widening gap between rich and poor, and the fact that while the stock market has soared, average wages have barely budged.

“Inequality has deepened,” Obama said. “Upward mobility has stalled. The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by, let alone get ahead. And too many still aren’t working at all.”

Salute to wounded soldier

In an emotional, flag-waving finish to his speech, Obama drew a standing ovation from people of all political stripes by saluting the heroism of Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg. The Army Ranger survived a roadside blast in Afghanistan and has recovered to the point where he attended the speech, seated next to first lady Michelle Obama.

“Like the America he serves, Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg never gives up and he does not quit,” Obama said.

In a nod to bipartisanship, Obama drew applause with a brief tribute to John Boehner, “the son of a barkeeper” who rose to become speaker of the House of Representatives and the top Republican in Congress. Boehner gave Obama a thumbs-up.

Obama’s political objective in the address was to create a narrative for Democrats to use as they seek to head off Republicans eager to wrest control of the Senate from Democrats in November elections and build on their majority in the House.

The party in control of the White House typically loses seats in these so-called mid-term elections, but Democrats feel they stand a chance of limiting their losses or even making some gains.

To that end, Obama drew loud applause by underscoring in particular the economic plight of women, who he noted make up about half the US workforce but still earn 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. Women voters helped re-elect Obama in 2012.

“This year, let’s all come together — Congress, the White House and businesses from Wall Street to Main Street — to give every woman the opportunity she deserves, because I firmly believe when women succeed, America succeeds,” he said.

Obama’s governing strategy means he has scaled back ambitions for large legislative actions and wants to focus more on smaller-scale initiatives that can reduce income inequality and create more opportunities for middle-class workers.

The wage hike for federal contract workers to $10.10 per hour, for example, will mean a pay raise for only about 560,000 federal contract workers.

That’s only a tiny fraction of the number who would see bigger paychecks under stalled legislation to increase the minimum wage.

Some 3.6 million workers were paid the federal minimum wage in 2012.

Obama spent a sizable part of his speech hammering away at issues that have long been debated but remain stalled, like closing the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He renewed an appeal for Congress to give him the authority to speedily negotiate international trade agreements, a proposal held up by Democratic opposition.

And on one of his biggest priorities, immigration reform, Obama urged Congress to work together on an overhaul. He tempered his criticism of Republicans who have held up the legislation, with signs of possible progress emerging in recent days among House Republicans.

Obama stopped short of taking a step that immigration reform advocates have called on him to take. He did not take executive action to freeze the deportations of parents of children brought to the United States illegally.

“Let’s get immigration reform done this year,” he said.

‘Refighting old battles’

On healthcare, the issue that rocked his presidency and caused many Americans to lose confidence in him, Obama defended the overhaul law he signed in 2010 but did not make it a centerpiece, urging Americans to sign up for medical insurance coverage by a March 31 deadline.

He challenged Republicans to come up with a viable alternative instead of repeating past failed attempts to repeal the law.

“Now, I don’t expect to convince my Republican friends on the merits of this law. But I know that the American people aren’t interested in refighting old battles. So again, if you have specific plans to cut costs, cover more people and increase choice — tell America what you’d do differently,” he said.

Bill Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar, found Obama’s speech overall to be rather restrained compared to the usual partisan rhetoric in Washington.

“His language was mostly devoid of overt partisan provocation. On policy, he gave little ground to the Republicans, but he did little to confront them either,” said Galston, who had worked for Democratic president Bill Clinton.

Obama said nothing about whether he would approve the long-delayed Keystone XL Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline that environmentalists oppose.

Instead, Obama spoke passionately about the need to tackle climate change, a statement that could foreshadow more executive actions to reduce carbon emissions this year.

Obama said, “The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight and it will require some tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.”

Republicans clambered for some of the same rhetorical ground as Obama in pledging to narrow the gap between rich and poor but staked out a different vision for doing so.

US Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chairwoman of the House Republican Caucus, said in her party’s official response to Obama’s speech that Republicans want to rely on free markets and trust people to make their own decisions, not have the government make decisions for them.

“The president talks a lot about income inequality, but the real gap we face today is one of opportunity inequality,” she said, videotaped seated on a couch in a living room setting.

With three years left in office, Obama is trying to recover from a difficult past year in office, when immigration and gun control legislation failed to advance in Congress and the rollout of the key provisions of his healthcare law stumbled.

Polls reflect a dissatisfied and gloomy country. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Tuesday showed 68 per cent of Americans saying the country is either stagnant or worse off since Obama took office. People used words like “divided”, “troubled” and “deteriorating” to describe the state of the country, the poll showed.

Obama dwelled mostly on domestic issues in his hour-long address, but warned Congress he would veto any effort to increase economic sanctions on Iran as he tries to reach a comprehensive deal with Tehran to ensure it does not obtain a nuclear weapons capability.

A CNN poll found that 44 per cent of respondents viewed Obama’s address very positively while 32 per cent felt somewhat positively about it and 22 per cent were negative toward it.

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s prime minister vowed Wednesday that his government will pursue peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, naming a four-member committee to facilitate negotiations.

In a speech to parliament, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also called on the militants to observe a ceasefire, and condemned them for targeting security forces and civilians in recent months.

Sharif long has supported talks as the best way to end the years of fighting in the country’s northwest.

But after a spate of attacks in January, some in Pakistan have advocated he forego negotiations in favour of a large-scale military operation against the Taliban and other Islamic extremist groups.

“It is necessary for the success of the talks to start this process with good intentions and it demands that the acts of terrorism be immediately stopped. Talks and terrorism cannot go side by side,” Sharif told lawmakers.

He said he had decided to accept a recent offer by the militants to start negotiations. “We want to give peace another chance by forgetting the bitter experience of the past,” Sharif said.

The four people named by Sharif to head the negotiations are: Rahimullah Yousafzai, a local journalist and expert on the Taliban; Pakistan’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, Rustam Shah Mohmand; retired intelligence officer Mohammed Amer and columnist Irfan Sadiqui.

One of the negotiators, Mohmand, said the government had few options but to keep trying to bring the militants to the table because force had not ended the militants’ attacks.

“You will kill them. They will kill you. The killing cycle will go on,” Mohmand said.

He said the committee would initially try to covertly establish contacts with the militants, but warned that the task would not be easy.

Another committee member, Sadiqui, said he hoped the Taliban would respond positively to the initiative. “Let us make an effort for peace and expect good results,” he told a news conference in Islamabad.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Shahidullah Shahid, said the militant group has convened a meeting of its executive council to discuss the prime minister’s offer and the negotiating team.

“We believe in serious and purpose oriented talks,” he said in a statement.

Sharif has come under fire in the past for pursuing peace talks over military action against Pakistani Taliban militants in the northwest who have been trying to overthrow the government and enforce their harsh brand of Islam across the country. Critics say the militants have broken numerous peace accords and simply use the negotiating time to gather their strength.

In a country that seems to suffer from endless bomb attacks and shootings, the idea of a negotiated settlement has some popularity. Many Pakistanis view the war in the country’s northwest as being imposed on them by the United States after the invasion of Afghanistan and resent being forced to fight fellow Muslims.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani Taliban continued their attacks Wednesday in other parts of the country, underlining just how difficult it would be to come to a negotiated settlement.

Three members of the security forces were killed in separate attacks in the southern city of Karachi, said senior police officer Amir Farooqi. A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks.

In one, assailants threw a grenade at a vehicle carrying paramilitary Rangers in the Nazimabad neighbourhood, killing one of them. Minutes later, a roadside bomb wounded three security personnel in the same area, and then a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the headquarters of the paramilitary Rangers, killing one Ranger and a private guard, Farooqi said.

Karachi is the capital of southern Sindh province. It has been the scene of scores of such attacks against security personnel in recent years.

BANGKOK — Thailand’s government vowed Tuesday to push ahead with controversial elections this weekend, despite threats by opposition protesters to disrupt the polls in an attempt to stop the ruling party returning to power.

The announcement followed talks between Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and election officials, who urged a delay following violence in which at least 10 people have been killed and hundreds injured in grenade attacks, drive-by shootings and clashes.

In the latest incident, shots were fired Tuesday near a Bangkok army facility where Yingluck was holding meetings, as hundreds of protesters massed outside. Emergency services said two people were injured.

Police later said an undercover officer fired a shot to fend off angry protesters who saw him, injuring one demonstrator.

The officer was then left “critically injured” by rally guards who severely beat him, police added in a statement.

The Thai capital has been shaken by nearly three months of mass street demonstrations, demanding Yingluck’s elected government step down to make way for an unelected “people’s council” that would oversee reforms aimed at curbing the dominance of her billionaire family.

“Even if the election is postponed, the problems will not go away. I don’t think that the [protest] movement will stop,” Deputy Prime Minister Phongthep Thepkanjana told reporters.

The kingdom has been bitterly divided since Yingluck’s older brother Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted as prime minister by royalist generals in a coup more than seven years ago.

Critics accuse the billionaire tycoon-turned-politician of controlling his sister’s government from Dubai, where he lives to avoid prison for a corruption conviction.

The Election Commission (EC) proposed during Tuesday’s talks to postpone the election for 120 days, but after discussions it agreed with the government to press ahead with the February 2 vote.

The EC fears that there might be “clashes” during voting, election commissioner Somchai Srisutthiyakorn told reporters, adding that polling stations would close early in the event of problems.

The main opposition Democrat Party is boycotting Sunday’s polls, saying reforms are needed to ensure the vote is truly democratic and to prevent abuse of power by the next government.

‘No justification’ for voter intimidation

Advance voting over the weekend was marred by widespread disruption by opposition protesters who besieged polling stations and stopped hundreds of thousands from casting ballots.

“The protesters claim they are fighting corruption and seeking reforms, but this doesn’t justify their use of force and intimidation to block voting,” Brad Adam, Asia director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Tuesday.

Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban late Tuesday urged supporters to “prepare everything to not allow the election to happen on February 2”, raising fears of further violence.

An anti-government rally leader was shot dead on Sunday while giving a speech from the back of a pickup truck in a Bangkok suburb, during the campaign by demonstrators to block advance voting.

In another apparently politically related killing, the body of a man wearing a wristband popular among protesters was found Tuesday near a rally site with several bullet wounds, according to police, although the circumstances of his death were unclear.

“Thailand is spiralling into political violence as opposition and pro-government groups respond tit-for-tat against attacks and provocations,” Adams said.

“Leaders on all sides need to rein in their supporters, order the attacks to stop, and negotiate a political solution that respects democratic principles before the situation deteriorates further.”

Yingluck’s meeting with the election authorities came after the constitutional court last Friday ruled that the polls could legally be pushed back because of the civil strife.

The government notes that under the constitution an election should normally be held no more than 60 days after the dissolution of parliament, which happened in early December.

The protesters have staged a self-styled “shutdown” of Bangkok since January 13, occupying several main intersections, although attendance has gradually dwindled and disruption has been limited.

The government has declared a 60-day state of emergency in the capital and surrounding areas, giving authorities the power to ban public gatherings of more than five people, although they have not yet done so and demonstrators have vowed to defy the decree. 

KIEV — Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov resigned on Tuesday while deputies loyal to President Viktor Yanukovich, acting to calm violent street protests, back-tracked and overturned anti-protest laws they rammed through parliament 12 days ago.

The first real concessions by Yanukovich since the crisis erupted two months ago brought cries of “Hurrah!” from several thousand demonstrators on Kiev’s Independence Square, focal point of the protests.

But opposition leaders said they would continue to harness street power to wring even more gains from Yanukovich.

“We have to change not only the government, but the rules of the game as well,” declared boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko. “We are sure the struggle will continue,” he said.

The 66-year-old Azarov tendered his resignation as parliament met for an emergency session to work out a deal that would satisfy the opposition, and end protests in the capital Kiev and in other cities in which six people have been killed.

Yanukovich quickly accepted his resignation and that of his Cabinet. Azarov’s spokesman said first deputy prime minister, Serhiy Arbuzov, a former central bank chief, would step in as acting prime minister while other ministers would stay on in an acting role until a new cabinet had been formed.

Azarov, a loyal lieutenant of Yanukovich since the latter was elected to power in February 2010, said he was stepping down to help find a political compromise “for the sake of a peaceful settlement of the conflict”.

But in reality he has been publicly humiliated by Yanukovich’s offer at the weekend to give his job to former economy minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, another opposition leader, in an effort to stem the rising protests against his rule.

The opposition has been calling consistently for the resignation of the Azarov government since the crisis started.

But opposition leaders have shied away from the offer of top government posts by Yanukovich, seeing it as a trap intended to compromise them in front of their supporters on the streets.

Yatsenyuk, one of a “troika” of opposition leaders, formally turned down the offer of the top government job on Monday night.

The steward of the heavily-indebted economy through hard times and recession, Azarov backed the decision in November to walk away from a free trade agreement with the European Union — the move which sparked the mass street protests.

And it was Azarov who took the heat in parliament, defending the need for closer economic ties with Russia in a stormy debate with the opposition.

Repeal of laws

Parliament went into emergency session on Tuesday with ministers loyal to Yanukovich saying they would press for a state of emergency to be declared if the opposition leaders did not rein in protesters, and end occupation of municipal and government buildings across the country.

But then Yanukovich loyalists — clearly under pressure from the president and his aides to make a U-turn — voted to repeal anti-protest legislation they had rammed through on January 16.

It was these laws — banning virtually all form of public protest — which sparked a violent turn on the street leading to open clashes between radical activists and police in which six people were killed.

Opposition leaders sought to keep up the pressure on Yanukovich, with Yatsenyuk calling on him to swiftly sign the repeal of the laws into force.

Klitschko said opposition lawmakers would now press for an amnesty for detained activists and a return to the 2004 constitution which would greatly reduce the present powers of the president.

“These decisions which parliament has adopted are good but it’s only a little progress. We won’t leave here until the system and the constitution has been changed,” said Ivan, 45, from Lviv region who was at one of the people’s barricades leading down to Independence Square.

“We have been fighting for two months and we do not want to stop now half way along the road. The time for talk is over. Everything is serious now,” said Serhiy from Vinnytsya region in central Ukraine.

Alarm in West

Though the protest movement began because of Yanukovich’s U-turn on policy towards Europe, it has since turned into a mass demonstration, punctuated by clashes with police, against perceived misrule and corruption under Yanukovich’s leadership.

Several hundred people camp round-the-clock on Kiev’s Independence Square and along an adjoining thoroughfare, while more radical protesters confront police lines at Dynamo football stadium some distance away.

A leader of “Right Sector”, a radical nationalist group involved in violent clashes with police, said the group’s members would stick to a truce which has held for several days as long as authorities made an effort to find a compromise with opposition leaders.

“If they (the authorities) make a move to compromise we will reduce our activities,” Right Sector leader Petro Yarush told reporters.

Talk of a state of emergency being declared in the former Soviet republic of 46 million made the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, hastily bring forward a visit to Ukraine and was due to arrive in Kiev on Tuesday night.

US Vice President Joe Biden called Yanukovich on Monday to urge the government not to declare a state of emergency and to work with the opposition to bring a peaceful end to unrest.

In Brussels, Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose government has extended a $15 billion aid package of credits and cheaper gas to Ukraine, said Moscow would abide by its commitments to Ukraine, irrespective of whoever was in government.