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Fateful Dinner Party That Brought Disfigurement in Its Wake •
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Inquiry Sought into Claims of U.S. Funding
By Nick Paton Walsh
The Guardian U.K.
Monday 13 December 2004
Ukrainian MPs are seeking a parliamentary investigation into allegations that money from the U.S. government was used to help fund the opposition during the recent electoral campaign.
Vasyl Horbal, a member of the Regions of Ukraine party which forms the support base for the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, told Interfax yesterday: "Next week, we will suggest convening [parliament's] investigating commission to look into reports by the U.S. department of state on financing of the campaign of our opponent."
The U.S. state department last week said it had spent $65m over the past two years financing groups in support of democracy in Ukraine, part of the $1bn spent for the same purpose globally each year.
"Our money doesn't go to candidates. It goes to the institutions that it takes to run a free and fair election," said a spokesman, Richard Boucher.
The U.S. embassy said it - together with seven other western embassies, including Britain's - had funded an exit poll which showed Viktor Yushchenko was ahead in the first run-off by 11 points, and helped to spark the mass protests.
A variety of NGOs which benefit from U.S. government money also sent election observers. The International Centre for Policy Studies, which is funded by U.S. money, was one of several NGOs accused of a pro-Yushchenko bias. Mr. Yushchenko sits on its board.
Freedom House in Kiev, an NGO partly funded by the U.S., helped to provide training - some say even funding - to the youth activist group Pora, one of the main agitators of blockades and protests during the 16-day crisis.
Ron Paul, a Texas congressman, said in comments posted on the congressional website: "President Bush said last week that 'Any election [in Ukraine], if there is one, ought to be free from any foreign influence.' Unfortunately, it seems that several U.S. government agencies saw things differently and sent U.S. taxpayer dollars into Ukraine in an attempt to influence the outcome."
He said millions were sent by the U.S. Agency for International Development to an NGO in Kiev called the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative, which then sent the money on to "numerous Ukrainian" NGOs, many of which were "blatantly in flavor of Viktor Yushchenko".
While there were no claims that these groups directly financed Mr. Yushchenko's presidential attempt, there have been media reports that Russian oil firms paid up to $200m to support Mr. Yanukovich's candidacy.
Petro Poroshenko, an MP and one of Mr. Yushchenko's key confidants, said in a telephone interview: "I take responsibility for saying that we did not take one penny from abroad."
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Fateful Dinner Party That Brought Disfigurement in Its Wake
By Nick Paton Walsh
The Guardian U.K.
Monday 13 December 2004
It was no routine dinner party, its guests as distinguished as its agenda was questionable.
On the night of September 5, the leader of the Ukrainian opposition, Viktor Yushchenko, met Igor Smeshko, the head of the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, and his deputy, Volodymyr Stasiuk, reportedly a confidant of the outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma.
The opposition had requested the meeting to discuss how the SBU, the successor to the KGB, would act during the forthcoming electoral campaign. Mr. Yushchenko was ahead in most of the polls, and presumably sought assurances that the SBU would stay neutral.
At Mr. Smeshko's luxurious dacha outside Kiev, they ate and drank until the small hours. But it was not until Mr. Yushchenko returned home that the first traces came to light of the poisoning that was to nearly take his life.
Kateryna, his wife, told ABC on Friday: "I thought there was something different about my husband when he came home that night - because he has never taken any medicine, he's a very healthy man. And I tasted some medicine on his breath, on his lips. And I asked him about it, he brushed it away, saying there is nothing."
It was a typical reaction from a man whose tanned, square-jawed face had helped catapult him from being a former national bank chief to presidential contender in four years. A healthy, vigorous man at 50, he listed skiing and basketball among his hobbies.
So when that night the illness first struck, he shrugged it off as bad food poisoning. Yet the abdominal pains grew in intensity, interrupting his heavy campaigning. By September 10, local doctors had recommended he seek expert treatment abroad.
When he arrived at the private Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna, his body was in an almost total state of collapse. He was groggy, and had the same chronic abdominal pain, and his organs appeared close to collapse.
His blood tests showed severe abnormalities. His face and upper chest were covered in unusual lesions. His digestive tract and stomach were speckled with ulcers and bleeding abrasions. Eight days of intensive tests followed, yet the doctors, led by the director of the clinic, Michael Zimpfer, could not pin down the cause of his illness. They said at the time that he had arrived too late after falling ill for any poison he had ingested to still be in his bloodstream.
Without Mr. Yushchenko, the opposition's campaign was faltering, so he opted for a plan to allow him to get back on the election trail. Doctors inserted a drip into his spine so he could receive constant painkillers.
Three days after checking himself out of the Vienna clinic, he stood before parliament and accused the government of trying to kill him. "Look at my face," he said. "Note my articulation. This is one-hundredth of the problems that I've had. I want to know the names of the assassins very much. But even without any investigation the answer is simple - the killer is the regime. I survived because my guardian angels were not asleep at the time. Every one of you is next, however."
On September 28, he returned to Vienna for further tests. The doctors were no nearer establishing the cause. They suspected foul play, but had no evidence of poison, instead suggesting various rare diseases, such as the condition rosacea, might be to blame for his facial disfigurement.
He pressed on with campaigning, but the disfigurement remained the unanswered question behind his election campaign and the 16-day crisis that followed.
Days after parliament passed constitutional changes, the proof that doctors at the Rudolfinerhaus had sought for weeks finally emerged. "We could do a diagnosis and check his symptoms," said Dr Zimpfer.
"But we had no experience in advanced chemical weapons or biological weapons. We made an international call to several experts in Europe and the U.S.."
He said they had been able to pinpoint that the poison was based on dioxin. The doctors said on Saturday he had arrived in Vienna with levels of dioxin in his blood a thousand times above normal.
The Yushchenko campaign refuses to name any suspects for the poisoning. "Mr. Yushchenko does not want revenge," said spokeswoman Irina Gerashenko, who said the prosecutor general's renewed investigation should make conclusions alone. She added: "Then the courts can decide."
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