KIEV, May 13 (RIA Novosti, Olga Bernatskaya) - A draft agreement for a Ukrainian parliamentary coalition will be ready within the next few days, the Ukrainian Socialist Party leader said Saturday.
"The drafting of a coalition agreement is nearing completion. I hope that on Monday or Tuesday we will be able to discuss the coalition format with President Yushchenko," Olexander Moroz said, adding that he had always favored a coalition of three political forces, not a broad coalition.
The coalition includes Yuliya Tymoshenko's bloc, the pro-presidential Our Ukrainian bloc, and the Socialist Party of Ukraine.
Last Friday, President Viktor Yushchenko met with Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov, who also heads the pro-presidential Our Ukraine bloc, and the other leaders of parliamentary parties elected at the March 26 polls to discuss forming a coalition.
"I think that on May 14-16, a draft agreement will be ready which Our Ukraine will accept," the prime minister said. "Our task forces are trying to take into account the positions of other political forces as much as possible."
The move is an apparent bid to break current deadlock as the deadline approaches to form a coalition in the Supre Rada, parliament, a step required for the formation of a government.
According to the official election results, the Party of Regions, led by former presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, won the elections with 32.14% of the vote and will take 186 seats in Ukraine's 450-seat parliament.
Yanukovych's pro-Russia party was followed by the Tymoshenko bloc with 22.29% of the vote (129 seats), Our Ukraine with 13.95% (81 seats), the Socialist Party with 5.69% (33 seats) and the Communist Party with 3.66% (21 seats).
No other party won a 3% share of the vote needed to take up a place in the Rada, which under the country's constitution must convene 30 days after the publication of the election results in two newspapers on April 27.
