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Opposition Holds Massive Rally in Kiev, Demands Kuchma's Resignation
Ukraine's opposition parties launched a massive rally here Sunday evening, demanding the resignation of President Leonid Kuchma for alleged involvement in the disappearance of a journalist.
It was estimated that more than 10,000 people took part in the rally. Organizers said the number would increase when more people from other regions arrived in Kiev.
During the demonstration, protesters marched through Kiev and gathered at Hkreshchatik street, near the Independence Square in downtown Kiev, calling for Kuchma to step down.
There have been several demonstrations against Kuchma since audio tapes were made public by Socialist Party leader Olexander Moroz in parliament on November 28 last year. In these tapes, a voice resembling Kuchma's is heard ordering security chiefs to arrange the kidnap of the independent journalist Georgy Gongadze.
Gongadze, 31, co-founder of a news website, Ukrainian Pravda, often criticized Kuchma and his links with powerful businessmen. He disappeared last September and two months later, a decapitated, acid-burnt corpse was found on a rubbish tip near Tarashcha, 90 kilometers north of Kiev.
Ukraine's Prosecutor-General Mikhailo Potebenko told parliament that experts were 99.66 percent certain of the identification, following Ukrainian-Russian DNA tests, while Russian experts were 99 percent certain that the corpse was that of Gongadze.
The prosecutor-general has refused to declare Gongadze's death and to open a murder inquiry, calling for further investigation. Under increasing pressure from the European Union and the United States, the Ukrainian authorities agreed to invite the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify the corpse.
Kuchma, however, has repeatedly denied the allegations of his involvement in the Gongadze case, saying the tapes were fake.
The former security officer, Mykola Melnichenko, who allegedly recorded about 300 hours of audio tapes in the president's office, has fled to Europe and been charged with slander and forgery by Ukraine's prosecutors.
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