Donetsk activists offered to sign Tymoshenko's "protocol of mutual understanding"
KYIV. April 23 (Interfax) - Ukrainian presidential candidate, Batkivshchyna party leader Yulia Tymoshenko has handed over a protocol of mutual understanding to the activists who occupied the Donetsk regional administration building and expressed the hope they will sign the document drawn up with due account of their demands and vacate the building.
A report posted on the Batkivshchyna website said the protocol's signatories would be the Batkivshchyna party and the group of individuals occupying the building of the Donetsk regional administration.
The protocol read out by Tymoshenko in Donetsk calls for the restoration of civil peace and tranquility, the Ukrainian unity and territorial integrity, an independent, fair, socially oriented and law-governed state and a broad national dialogue tasked to resolve regional problems and to remove disagreements between regions and the center.
The sides undertake the following commitments.
The Batkivshchyna faction in the Verkhovna Rada pledges to submit and support a bill on the regional status of the Russian language while Ukrainian will remain the only state language in the country.
Batkivshchyna also undertakes to initiate constitutional amendments or power decentralization, for instance, through financial independence of local communities.
Another commitment of Batkivshchyna is to liquidate regional and district administrations in the course of the constitutional process and to hand over their powers to the elected heads and executive committees of regional and district councils, Tymoshenko underscored.
According to the protocol, Batkivshchyna will submit to the parliament and support a bill amnestying all peaceful protesters but the persons who have committed grave crimes.
In return, the protesters undertake to vacate the Donetsk regional administration building, to give civil servants free access to their offices and to let public utility workers clean the building and its surroundings.
The protocol compels the protesters to lay down all unregistered and illegal weapons immediately and voluntarily.
The document mentions the commitment to abstain from the illegal use of force and to resolve sociopolitical problems peacefully in a national dialogue.
"We need to reach mutual understanding between the central authorities and citizens who live in the east and in the west. I very much want this understanding to be reached peacefully, especially in the light of the Geneva accords. I do not want Ukrainian citizens on both sides to have casualties, and I will be working on results," Tymoshenko stated.