The Ukrainian Parliament Wednesday approved a compromise package of laws and constitutional changes to overhaul key institutions, paving the way for a re-run this month of its presidential election. 

After days of divisive debate, it met some demands from outgoing President Leonid Kuchma as part of legislation that should let the election proceed, free of cheating, and end over two weeks of mass unrest on the streets of the state.

The next president will now have weaker powers, parliament and the regions will be stronger and election oversight will be tightened.

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich was declared winner of last month's rigged vote, prompting huge demonstrations in support of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko.

The Supreme Court annulled the result and a new election has been called for December 26.

In Ukraine's parliament, 402 of 450 members, enough to approve amendments to the constitution, backed changes.

"This is an act of consolidation and reconciliation, an act which demonstrates that Ukraine is united," speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn told the chamber.

He and Kuchma held aloft the documents approved moments earlier. By the same vote, members also approved changes to the constitution to reduce powers of the president and increase those of parliament -- key demands set by Kuchma and his parliamentary supporters in order to support election reform.

Kuchma appeared in parliament just before the vote, urging members to approve the laws for the benefit of the country. He said he had accepted the resignation of Ukraine's prosecutor general, one of several opposition demands.

NATO has postponed a meeting expected to be held today between its foreign ministers and their Ukrainian counterpart.

The move came amid growing tensions over Ukraine between the West and Moscow, which on Tuesday warned western nations against interfering there.

"NATO will look to invite the foreign minister of a new and legitimate government to Brussels as soon as practicable," one source said yesterday.

The source said NATO ambassadors would probably meet Ukraine's envoy to the 26-member alliance tomorrow and stressed that NATO was not breaking off all contacts with Kiev.

Foreign ministers of NATO, including US Secretary of State Colin Powell, had been due to meet their Ukrainian counterpart, Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, at the end of the alliance's annual ministerial meeting in Brussels.

Meanwhile, medical experts are still investigating the cause of Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's illness during election campaigning, and poisoning remains one possibility, his doctor said yesterday.

Yushchenko fell ill in September while on the presidential campaign trail. He later accused the authorities of trying to kill him with poison.

"At the moment there are a couple of possible versions that we are in the final stages of examining, together with colleagues in France, the United States and Germany," said Mykola Korpan, who supervised Yushchenko's treatment at Vienna's Rudolfinerhaus clinic in September.

(China Daily December 9, 2004)