UKRAINE: REGIONS PARTY RADA DEPUTY SAYS REGIONS

C O N F I D E N T I A L KIEV 001353 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/05/2016 TAGS: PGOV PINR UP SUBJECT: UKRAINE: REGIONS PARTY RADA DEPUTY SAYS REGIONS READY TO JOIN RADA MAJORITY COALITION REF: KIEV 1337 Classified By: Ambassador for reasons 1.4 (b,d). ¶1. (C) Summary: During an April 4 meeting, Party of Regions parliamentary (Rada) deputy and former Deputy PM Andriy Klyuyev told Ambassador that Regions was ready to join a coalition with the pro-presidential Our Ukraine bloc. He dismissed the possibility that Regions was looking to force a new election. End summary. ¶2. (C) In a late afternoon meeting April 4, Klyuyev, who had just arrived from the Rada session (reftel),said the lame duck Rada would not dissolve until April 26. Declaring that Regions was ready to join a coalition in the new Rada, Klyuyev said he had met earlier in the day with Our Ukraine faction leader Mykola Martynenko and with Our Ukraine Executive Committee chairman Mykola Katerynchuk, and March 31 with Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov. Klyuyev said his discussion with Yekhanurov, while friendly, had not included discussion of which party members might take Cabinet positions; in particular, there had been no discussion as to whether ex-PM and Party of Regions leader Yanukovych would be an acceptable prime minister candidate. While he confirmed that discussions were taking place, Klyuyev declined to comment further on Regions' negotiations with the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT). ¶3. (C) Klyuyev confirmed that, with 186 members in the new Rada, Regions could prevent the opening of the new Rada session (which requires a 2/3, or 300-seat, attendance) and thus precipitate the calling of a new election by refusing to attend when the new Rada convened, but said Regions was not considering doing so. He did not rule out, however, the possibility that Regions might decide in the future to take this step. ¶4. (C) Klyuyev stressed that the Regions approach to governing would be to avoid economically ruinous policies that might return Ukraine's economy to the mid-90s, a period of high unemployment and inflation. Klyuyev claimed his party's wealthy members, such as owners of eastern Ukraine's industrial enterprises, controlled 80 percent of Ukraine's economy. The elections had been extremely expensive, so Regions would tend to avoid an election repeat; Regions' members would not put their short-term political interests above the nation's overall welfare, he claimed with dead seriousness. (Note: As Deputy PM under Yanukovych, Klyuyev was reportedly the person in charge of the incumbent regime's effective but ultimately failed dirty tricks effort against the Yushchenko-led opposition in the 2004 presidential election campaign.) ¶5. (U) Visit Embassy Kiev's classified website: www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev. Herbst