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Opposition: Results 'fraudulent'

Yushchenko promises no violence from demonstrators


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Yanukovych speaks in Kiev as results are announced.
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Ukraine demonstrators brave the snow to show their support for the opposition leader.

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KIEV, Ukraine (CNN) -- Opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko has called the results of Ukraine's election "fraudulent" but promised there would be no violence from the thousands of demonstrators packed into Kiev's Independence Square.

Yushchenko's comments came in an interview with CNN's Jill Dougherty just minutes before Ukraine's Central Election Commission released the final results of the highly contested election Wednesday.

The commission said current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych won the hotly contested presidential runoff with 49.46 percent of the vote.

Yushchenko, who was named on 46.61 of the ballots by the commission, had raised the possibility that the announced results may not be the final results.

He also said he hoped the election commission would have the courage to reject what he called the "fraudulent" outcome.

Yushchenko said he had proof that at least 3 million votes were falsified.

He said his supporters have amassed more than 11,000 complaints about the voting and considered 200 of them serious. In one region, he said, turnout increased by a half-million voters after polls closed.

"How can that be? It was a massive injection of the ballots in favor of the other candidate," he said.

When asked whether he would go so far as to try to foment a revolution to push himself into office, the opposition candidate said no, that there was no possibility of violence from his side, and promised that opposition demonstrators would not attack anything.

Yushchenko said the Ukraine army and security forces also have pledged not to resort to violence.

The candidate told Dougherty he would not accept a possible compromise in which the government-backed candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, would become president and he would become the prime minister.

Yushchenko called such a solution a political trick and said there would be no bargaining because the election was stolen.

He also said he would only take part in negotiations brokered by outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma if independent European groups like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) participated.

Yushchenko said he took a symbolic oath of office Tuesday on behalf of the people demonstrating on the streets and those who had cast their ballots.

Dougherty spoke with Yushchenko at his office inside opposition headquarters. The candidate was wearing an orange-striped tie in the color of his party and donned an orange sweater before he went out to join protesters in Kiev.


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