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Poland's ex-President Kwasniewski in crisis-torn Ukraine

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Poland's former President Aleksander Kwasniewski has arrived in Ukraine, wrapped in an ongoing conflict between the president- and prime minister-led forces, the Polish PAP news agency said Wednesday.
WARSAW, April 11 (RIA Novosti) - Poland's former President Aleksander Kwasniewski has arrived in Ukraine, wrapped in an ongoing conflict between the president- and prime minister-led forces, the Polish PAP news agency said Wednesday.

Kwasniewski, who played a role in Ukraine's 2004 "orange revolution" that swept Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko to power pushing aside Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovych, had been invited by the Ukrainian side, the agency said.

Yanukovych earlier said he could ask Russia and Poland for mediation in the crisis triggered by the presidential order to disband parliament and call early elections. Parliament backed foreign mediation in a vote Monday. Yushchenko has said the conflict is Ukraine's domestic affair.

Incumbent President Lech Kaczynski reiterated Wednesday, while en route to an informal EU gathering in the Latvian capital Riga, that he and his Lithuanian counterpart, Valdas Adamkus, were willing to help Ukraine.

Reports said Tuesday a group of Russian lawmakers and political experts would arrive in the ex-Soviet state Wednesday in line with earlier appeals for mediation from the Supreme Rada, dominated by Yanukovych's backers.

The crisis that has persisted for months received a further boost Tuesday when the Constitutional Court - asked to rule on the president's order - withheld judgment scheduled for Wednesday until April 17 after five judges refused to examine the validity of the decree, citing pressure and threats from the Yanukovych camp.

But Yanukovych's Party of Regions said the president had pressured the loyal judges in a bid to put off the judgment until the deadline for registering election lists in the run-up to a new poll slated for May 27.

"April 17 is the deadline for filing the lists," said Borys Petrov, a member of the Party of Regions parliamentary faction. "They are thereby pushing us to hastily make up the lists."

Yanukovych has said his party, the largest in parliament, will not take part in a poll pending the court's ruling. The president has reportedly refused to rule out the postponement of elections.

Yanukovych said Wednesday the Cabinet could request the president to suspend his decree over the postponement of a Constitutional Court session, adding such a step would have calmed the situation down.

Coalition supporters have been rallying in Kiev, and opposition forces led by ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who has long demanded a new election and resumed talks with the president, have said they will renew protests Wednesday,

Since the president ordered the dissolution of parliament April 2, accusing the majority coalition of illegally poaching lawmakers, the Supreme Rada has continued to work. Yushchenko has dismissed parliamentary resolutions as illegitimate.

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