Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, was pressed by members of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee to react to the news that a last-minute change to Ukraine's electoral law was a clear indication of foul play, ahead of Sunday's crucial presidential poll.
Moratinos said the European Union had mobilised considerable resources to monitor the elections and ensure their transparency. But he stressed that it was for EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton to respond to the situation.
"I am not the one who should react," Moratinos said, adding that he was "sure" that Ashton's reaction would appear shortly.
Sources from Ashton's cabinet told EurActiv that she would react after the elections, with a warning ahead of the poll less likely as incoming information was "contradictory".
On Wednesday, Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko drove up tensions ahead of Sunday's election, accusing her rival Viktor Yanukovich of preparing to rig the poll through last-minute changes to election rules.
Yanukovich's Regions Party earlier pushed through parliament an amendment to electoral rules that will scrap the requirement for a quorum of representatives of both contenders to approve the count at individual polling stations.
"Parliament has passed changes to the law [...] which wreck an honest presidential election, make it false, dishonest, unregulated," Tymoshenko, the prime minister, said in a televised statement.
"This has been done because Yanukovich does not believe in his victory and he wants to get a result only through falsification," she said.
She urged President Viktor Yushchenko not to sign the electoral rule changes into law and said she had invited ambassadors from the Group of Eight countries to an urgent meeting later on Wednesday.
"I think that the president, who has spoken much about honest elections, is simply obliged to publicly refuse to sign the law," Tymoshenko later told a television chat show.
"His signature will be a death sentence on honest elections in Ukraine and, as a result, to democracy in Ukraine."
Tymoshenko and Yanukovich are set for a run-off vote for president on Sunday after a bitter campaign in which she has openly insulted him and he has accused her of systematically lying.
Both have traded accusations of attempting to rig the election, but international poll monitors said a first round of voting last month was "clean" and instead criticised politicians' "unsubstantiated" charges of large-scale fraud.
Russian-speaking regions against Ukrainian-speaking ones
Tymoshenko, 49 years old, trailed Yanukovich by 10% in the first round of voting on 17 January. Although most observers say the outcome of Sunday's election is too close to call.
Yanukovich, a 59-year-old former prime minister, was disgraced in 2004 by mass protests known as the 'Orange Revolution'. He was initially declared the winner of the election, but the result was overturned and Viktor Yushchenko won a re-run of the vote.
Yanukovich is strong in the Russian-speaking east and south.
Tymoshenko, a leader of the Orange Revolution and prime minister in 2005 and since December 2007, has strong support in the Ukrainian-speaking west and centre of the country. But her ratings have taken a hit as Ukraine sank deep into recession and analysts say her fate may depend on a strong turnout.
"I know the crisis has not brought us happiness in life and has added uncertainty, but it is a reality all around the world, and so the global crisis cannot be a reason for your state of being to lead you to not vote or to vote against everyone," she urged television viewers at the end of a chat show.
The Regions Party had argued that the quorum could be abused by Tymoshenko's supporters if her representatives failed to turn up at the polling station, thus delaying the approval of the count or making it impossible altogether.
"Tymoshenko at the moment is in a difficult psychological state and again she is trying to find a way of falsifying the election," Yanukovich told a local television station while on the campaign trail in the eastern city of Luhansk.
He said he expected Yushchenko to sign the amendments.
"I am certain that President Yushchenko, who has also said many times that he is interested in carrying out honest elections in Ukraine, will sign it," Yanukovich told journalists.
(EurActiv with Reuters.)
