Parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn has said that the Ukrainian Parliament is obliged to bring constitutional reform to a logical conclusion. Speaking in an interview with the parliamentary newspaper Holos Ukrayiny, he said: “The Ukrainian Parliament is, apart from everything else, doomed and obliged to bring what we call constitutional reform to a logical conclusion.”

The Ukrainian Parliament will hold an extraordinary plenary sitting on August 30 at which it will consider 3 issues.

They are as follows:

1) Amendments to the law on local elections;

2) Amendments to the law on state guarantees for the savings of Ukrainian citizens (registration # 6491); and

3) On social security during establishment of new tariffs for communal services.

On August 26 speaker Lytvyn signed a petition signed by 174 MPs to hold an extraordinary sitting on August 30. The seventh session of the current convocation of the Ukrainian Parliament is scheduled to open on September 7.

Parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn has said that the current coalition will continue to operate in its current format of the parliamentary factions of the Party of Regions, Lytvyn Bloc and Communist Party. A number of individuals MPs from opposition factions are also official members of the coalition.

MP Andriy Senchenko, the head of the Crimean republican organization of the Fatherland party, which is headed by oppositionist and former premier Yulia Tymoshenko, has accused officers of the Security Service of Ukraine of illegal planting a wiretapping device in his office. He said this at a news conference in Simferopol today.

Ohio State University, Implementer of the United States Agency for International Development Legislative Policy Development Program (PDP II) Project Parliamentary Development Project II, as part of its technical assistance plan with the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and central authorities to implement e-governance technologies and standards of the European authorities announced a competition among enterprises and organizations the implementation of technological projects, namely:

The opposition Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc has urged Ukrainian citizens to protest against the latest 50-per-cent increase in household gas prices and plans to increase them further - a call that has been criticized as provocative by the pro-presidential Party of Regions.

The opposition Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc has said in a statement that members of the Fatherland party, which is part of the bloc, have been persecuted and pressurized in the past few weeks ahead of the local elections scheduled for October 31, the UNIAN news agency reported on August 11.