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| World News - updated 6:21 PM ET Feb 20 |
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By Pavel Polityuk CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (Reuters) - Embattled Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma sought refuge from his hostile capital Tuesday by traveling to the closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant where he lashed out at Western funding bodies. Thousands of demonstrators as well as opposition politicians and rights groups have been calling on Kuchma to resign following a scandal in which tape recordings of a voice similar to his ordered officials to kidnap a journalist who is feared murdered. Kuchma, who denies involvement in the disappearance of Internet journalist Georgiy Gongadze, canceled a planned visit to neighboring Moldova and toured the silent remains of Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986. The plant provided the cash-strapped ex-Soviet state with five percent of its power until it was shut down in December. Kuchma accused Western countries of not fulfilling pledges to help finance the building of replacement reactors elsewhere. ``Why do we go around with arms outstretched if they just hit us?'' Kuchma told reporters. ``We definitely need the loans, but we've been speaking about them since 1995... any thinking person needs to ask: do they want to give us the loans at all?'' The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has said it would lend Ukraine $215 million to build replacement reactors in western Ukraine, but, along with other institutions, tied the lending to International Monetary Fund (news - web sites) loans. The IMF, which had lifted a year-long lending freeze in December, said earlier this month it had not reached agreement with the government on paying out a loan tranche in March, effectively putting a temporary freeze back on lending over the country's slow pace of economic reform. ``We notice that new conditions keep being piled on us... I see this as their not wanting us to build the (new) reactors,'' said Kuchma after a tour past Chernobyl's cooling lake, iced over for the first time in decades after the station's closure. He also reiterated his criticism of opponents who have been pressing him to resign following the discovery last November of a decapitated corpse, almost certainly that of Gongadze, in woods outside Kiev. ``All this is based not on the will of the people, but on money,'' he said. Kuchma accuses wealthy opponents of coordinating the campaign against him. Kuchma, first elected in 1994, also criticized parliament for seeking to summon the prosecutor general for questioning Wednesday. The prosecutor, Mykhailo Potebenko, a Kuchma appointee, has been accused of dragging his feet in investigating Gongadze's disappearance. Parliament called on Potebenko to resign last year and some political parties plan to hold another confidence vote Thursday, although the chamber has no power to oust the prosecutor. Popular protests against Kuchma have gathered pace in recent weeks, although political analysts have said they do not think Kuchma, 62, will step down. Opposition groups plan to stage a mass rally in the capital Kiev Sunday.
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