Ukraine MPs change electoral laws

"This is an act of consolidation and reconciliation that proves Ukraine is united and indivisible," parliament speaker Volodymyr Litvin said right after the historic vote.

Ukraine's parliament voted to dismiss the central election commission as part of a compromise between outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and the opposition aimed at diffusing a weeks-long political crisis.

Deputies were due to choose a new 15-member commission later in the day. A new central election commission was a key demand of the opposition in its weeks-old standoff with Kuchma.

Meanwhile a British daily reported, quoting the doctor who oversaw his treatment that Ukraine's opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned in an attempt to kill him during election campaigning in September,

Doctors at Vienna's Rudolf-inerhaus clinic are within days of identifying the substance that left Yushchenko's face disfigured with cysts and lesions, Doctor Nikolai Korpan was quoted as telling The Times in a telephone interview.

Specialists in Britain, the United States and France had helped to establish that it was a biological agent, a chemical agent or, most likely, a rare poison that struck him down in the run-up to the presidential election, he said.

Doctors needed to examine Yushchenko again at the clinic in Vienna to confirm their diagnosis but were in no doubt that the substance was administered deliberately, he was quoted as saying.

"This is no longer a question for discussion," Doctor Korpan said. "We are now sure that we can confirm which substance caused this illness. He received this substance from other people who had a specific aim."

Asked if the aim had been to kill him, Korpan said: "Yes, of course."

Proof that Yushchenko was deliberately poisoned would be a devastating blow for his rival, the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, as the two candidates prepare for a repeat of a presidential run-off on December 26, The Times said.

It would raise questions about whether the poisoning was ordered by Yanukovich, his allies, or even the Kremlin, which fears that Yushchenko will take Ukraine out of its sphere of influence by joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union, it said.