Ukraine Opposition Leader's Daughter Urges EU, U.S. Hardline
The daughter of jailed Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko on Saturday said attempts to negotiate with the authorities were doomed to failure, as she pressed for the West to take a harder line.
Yevgeniya Tymoshenko spoke to Agence France Presse in Kiev in a phone interview from the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany where she met with EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele and Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino.
"We are calling for more radical action on the part of leaders of the democratic world," she said.
"Negotiations with (President Viktor) Yanukovych cannot be successful. We are still calling for Yanukovych's resignation and early elections."
Tymoshenko said she had explained to Western officials that protesters were not "extremists or provocateurs" and "democratic countries should defend our struggle".
"We need to speak to the authorities from a position of power instead of trying to seek a compromise that Yanukovych will never accept," she said, in an apparent criticism of other opposition leaders who have conducted negotiations with Yanukovych.
"I will continue to fight for my mother because she is the main political prisoner of this regime.... She is now considered a more dangerous enemy than ever."
Tymoshenko was one of the leaders of the pro-democracy "Orange Revolution" in 2004 and then served as prime minister. She is in prison for abuse of power but she has dismissed this as political revenge by Yanukovych.
Source: Agence France Presse
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