Quotable notes (08/20/06)

Quotable notes

" Who wants to be in a coalition, be there. Those who want a cooperation agreement can have it. Those who like the idea of opposition can live that way. But I am asking that Parliament should be decisive.

"I would like to ask everyone in this hall and those who are not here to stop the policy of political wars. Replace the policy of political war with the policy of competition.

"This is how it is done in every country. Let us recognize that the political session hall is what it is today and there will be no other.

"If we don't realize this I am sure the entire nation will be in opposition to such political forces. So, I am calling on the Ukrainian Parliament to reach understanding and realize its great consolidating mission, which you are bearing on your shoulders. "

- President Viktor Yushchenko addressing the Verkhovna Rada on August 4, when he submitted the candidacy of Viktor Yanukovych for prime minister, as carried live on TV Channel 5 and reported by the BBC Monitoring Service (from Action Ukraine Report).

" What are we going to do? Are we going to look for what disunites us, or is it better for us to look for what unites us? The path that we have recently walked down has convinced us that we will only achieve positive things if we look for a way toward what unites us.

"It is not easy, but if you want to get anywhere you need to start walking. We have walked down that road. We have found positive things. I am certain that society, too, has felt that, when the politicians presenting general public moods sit down at the negotiating table and find a road toward understanding. "

- Viktor Yanukovych, speaking in the Parliament on August 4 after the president submitted his candidacy for prime minister, as carried on Channel 5 and reported by the BBC Monitoring Service (from Action Ukraine Report).

" Russia needed to achieve one thing - to ensure that there was no 'Orange' ideology and practice in Ukraine threatening the bases of the so-called managed democracy in Russia.

"And as for relations with the West, including economic ones, we'll see what happens. Of course, the West will not be ecstatic over the change of the Ukrainian government, but, on the other hand, the West was not offering us anything real. So we will rely on our own forces and believe that Ukraine has already seen the very worst. We will be optimists. "

- Myroslav Popovych, director of the Skovoroda Philosophy Institute of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, offering his commentary on the new Coalition of National Unity on August 4 in the newspaper Den, as reported by the BBC Monitoring Service (from Action Ukraine Report).

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