The European Union urged Ukrainian leaders to stick to their recent political agreement and do their utmost to enable the parliamentary elections to take place on 30 September.

"We hope that the agreement that the president and the prime minister had reached on the early elections will prove to be a sustainable one and will pave the way for elections to take place on 30 September," said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a joint press conference with Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich following the 11th session of the EU-Ukraine Cooperation Council on 18 June in Luxembourg.

At the end of May, following a few weeks of grave political conflict over the division of power between Ukrainian leaders, President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yanukovich reached an agreement, setting the conditions for parliamentary elections to take place in September. This agreement has been implemented by President Yushchenko, who on 5 June issued a decree setting a date for the early elections, as it was earlier agreed by the main political forces in Ukraine, for 30 September. It can therefore be assumed that this time Yushchenko's decision willnot be contested by his political rivals.

MONITORING MISSION

Following the agreement on a date for the early elections, which concluded the most serious phase of the political conflict, the Commission decided to send a monitoring mission to oversee the conduct of the forthcoming poll. …