Ukraine seeks way out of deadly crisis

Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych met with the opposition Thursday for crunch talks in search of a way out of a crisis that has turned parts of Kiev into a battle zone, as pressure builds on him from the EU. The opposition has billed the talks at the presidential adminstration in Kiev as a last chance for the authorities to offer concessions before protesters become even more aggressive. The clashes, which came after two months of protests over Yanukovych's failure to sign an integration deal with the European Union under Russia pressure, led to near apocalyptic scenes in the Ukrainian capital as the demonstrations became engulfed in flames. Yanukovych on Thursday demanded an extraordinary session of parliament to ease the crisis which has already seen four protesters shot dead and one killed in a fall, according to activists. Speaker Volodymyr Rybak said parliament would discuss the protesters' demands for the government's resignation and the annulment of a controversial anti-protest law at a session expected next week, the presidency said in a statement. But he did not mention early presidential elections, a key opposition demand. "You know that recent mass riots have been accompanied by violence, bloodshed and arson. Today, the situation requires a quick resolution," Yanukovych told Rybak, the statement said. Fatherland party leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk, nationalist leader Oleg Tyagnybok and world boxing champion and UDAR (Punch) party leader Vitali Klitschko began much-delayed talks with Yanukovych in the evening, the presidency said. Klitschko had earlier brokered a truce in the violence between protesters and police for the duration of the talks. "Keep the barricades in place but (be) calm until the talks finish," he said. AFP correspondents at the scene of the fighting on Grushevsky Street confirmed the truce appeared to be holding. 'We will fight to the end' The protesters have marked their frontline with a semicircle of burning tyres which have sent a rancid plume of black smoke billowing into the Kiev sky and is visible throughout the city. However under the terms of the truce, protesters allowed police to douse the fires with water cannon and now only white smoke was rising at the scene. Both sides remained quietly behind their battle lines next to the stadium of the legendary Dynamo Kiev football club in central Kiev. Yatsenyuk had warned the protesters Wednesday that Yanukovych had 24 hours to agree a peaceful solution. "If he does not go down that path then we will go forwards together and if it means a bullet to the head, then it is a bullet to the head," he said. Protesters sought to reinforce their barricades by several metres by filling sandbags with snow, turning the protest zone around Independence Square into a virtual fortress. "Every 10 metres there is Ukrainian territory that we have to defend and for which we will fight to the end," said one radical protester on the front line, who asked not to be named. According to the interior ministry, 254 members of the riot police have been hurt in the clashes and 104 have been hospitalised. Over the five days of clashes, 73 protesters have been arrested and 21 of them have already been ordered to stay in pre-trial detention. Tensions have also spiralled outside Kiev and the governor of Ukraine's western Lviv region, Oleg Salo, resigned on Thursday after anti-government protesters shouting "revolution" stormed his offices. The success of the protest appeared to inspire similar attacks in staunchly nationalist western Ukraine, with protests at governors' offices in the regions of Ivano-Frankivsk and Rivne. But Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who is at the World Economic Forum in Davos where he faces a chilly reception, warned that "any anti-constitutional actions in the capital have to be stopped". Merkel, EU push for dialogue The deadly violence horrified Ukrainians, who have never witnessed such scenes in their country including during the 2004 Orange Revolution which was almost entirely peaceful. Amid calls for sanctions against the Ukrainian government, the United States revoked the visas of several Ukrainian nationals linked to violence against protesters in November and December last year. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Yanukovych Thursday and "made a pressing appeal to the president to start serious dialogue with the opposition and to reach concrete results," a statement said, while also urging the repeal of draconian anti-protest laws. Senior diplomats from EU nations meanwhile rejected a call from fellow EU member Lithuania to impose sanctions against the Ukrainian government in reprisal for the violence, said an EU diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she will meet Yanukovych as well as opposition leaders in protest-hit Kiev next week. Ukraine's former master Russia, which has regarded the country's pro-EU protest movement with suspicion from the start, has taken a different view and blamed the opposition and West for the clashes.