Yanukovich contests Ukraine vote results

"Yanukovich's team filed a complaint just before midnight on Tuesday over violations in all (voting) districts," commission spokeswoman Zoya Charikova told AFP.

"The commission now has two days to examine the appeal," she said.

The move means that Ukr-aine's five-week election saga, which has roiled this ex-Soviet nation and raised tension betw-een Russia and the West, is likely to drag on into the New Year amid legal wrangling.

Yanukovich has vowed to appeal the results of Sunday's rerun to the supreme court, though many observers here think the appeals are unlikely to scuttle the vote results.

Yesterday Interfax reported that Yanukovich had deposed four complaints with the high court over violations that he says occurred during Sunday's revote.

The moves came a day after the commission released complete preliminary results from the historic vote, which showed Yushchenko winning by a comfortable margin of 52 percent to Yanukovich's 41 percent, a difference of more than 2.2 million votes.

Earlier yesterday Ukraine's opposition resumed a blockade of government headquarters, heeding a call from its leader Yushchenko to prevent his rival Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich from chairing a cabinet meeting there.

A human chain of hundreds of orange-clad Yushchenko supporters surrounded the seat of government in central Kiev, and six vans blocked its main entrance.

Unlike the opposition's previous blockades, however, civil servants were allowed to pass through.

"We are blocking exclusively citizen Yanukovich," said Yury Lutsenko, a parliament deputy.