Pals again tomorrow?

Yanukovych made some conciliatory noises yesterday, in reply to Yushchenko's and the orange parties' offer to stage round table talks on Monday, in order to resolve the dispute in the VR.

PR have been staging a sit-in there for the last week, preventing parliament from operating.

Its getting close to the summer holidays. Everyone is thinking of getting away, so PR's call for mass actions of civil disobedience was probably a miscalculation, and a bluff that could be easily called. PR supporters will not thank their party for dragging them out into the streets in the middle of hot summer. People would rather be 'under a pear tree' at their dachas, or villages.

All the big-shot politico's are looking forward to getting out of the city, and jetting off to the sun, or to their expensive dachas or yachts on the Black sea, so maybe there will be a whiff of compromise [or capitulation?] in the air from NSNU and the President- they want matters resolved quickly.

At first sight, the oranges, who have now registered their coalition, should sit tight, make PR sweat, and give away nothing - at least for a few weeks, because there is 30 days to sort this out. But because a number of deputies in their ranks are not reliable, they are looking weak. Add to the mix the great animosity between Tymoshenko, who the coalition are proposing for PM, and Petro Poroshenko, who is being proposed for VR speaker - it looks as if 'this airplane may not fly'. The Tymoshenko - Poroshenko combination in particular, after last September's crisis, looks bizarre - a recipe for disaster. In the words of the poet, "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned.. Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."

Maybe tomorrow, at the round table, the pressure will really be on BYuT and the Socialists to back a grand coalition, or go into opposition..

One of the PR's leading lights, Vasyl Dzharty was interviewed in 'Dzerkalo Tyzhnya'. He denies the rumor that PR's 'banker', Rinat Akhmetov, would support Yushchenko for President in 2009, if Yushchenko's NSNU go into coalition with PR..

Yushchenko, in his Saturday radio address says he does not have any intention of dissolving parliament. If he did, his party NSNU, would be 'wiped out' in any fresh elections.