Ukraine's opposition leader, Mr Viktor Yushchenko, has compared the crisis in Ukraine to the fall of Soviet rule or the Berlin wall and has said the regime is in its last days.
The opposition leader, speaking a day after doctors said he had been poisoned, made his comments this afternoon after it was revealed that officials were cancelling a previous decision to close an investigation into the case of his alleged poisoning.
With his wife acting as translator, Mr Yushchenko made his comments at a news conference at the Austrian Rudolfinerhaus clinic where he is being treated.
He said the protests backing his allegations of vote-rigging had produced "a different country, a different nation". He predicted that "the regime that was in place for 14 years in Ukraine is now living its last days".
"We had not seen anything like that for the past 100 years. I believe it would be appropriate to compare this to the fall of the Soviet Union or the fall of the Berlin wall," Yushchenko told the news conference.
Mr Yushchenko, who faces government candidate, Mr Viktor Yanukovych, in a re-run of a disputed presidential runoff on Dec. 26, has claimed that he was poisoned by Ukrainian authorities, who deny the charges. His supporters at home expressed little surprise over the doctors' conclusion.
Mr Yushchenko fell ill in early September and had been treated at the Vienna clinic twice before. But it was the tests run since he checked in Friday night that provided conclusive evidence of the poisoning, said Dr. Michael Zimpfer, head doctor at the Rudolfinerhaus clinic.
The 50-year-old politician also has suffered from back pain and acute pancreatitis.
The substance containing the dioxin would most likely have been consumed the day Yushchenko fell ill, as dioxin is rapidly absorbed, Zimpfer said.
A parliamentary commission that investigated Yushchenko's mysterious illness in October said he complained of pains after meeting with Ihor Smeshko, the head of Ukraine's Secret Service, but it lists other places he ate or drank that day. Smeshko promised the secret service would investigate.
The massive quantities of dioxin in Yushchenko's system caused chloracne, a type of adult acne produced by exposure to toxic chemicals that left his once-handsome face badly disfigured, hospital dermatologist Hubert Pehmberger told The Associated Press.
Chloracne can take up to two to three years to heal, but Dr. Nikolai Korpan, the physician who oversaw the Ukrainian politician's treatment, said Yushchenko is "fully capable of working."
Dioxin
- a contaminant found in Agent Orange - is a byproduct of industrial processes such as waste incineration and chemical and pesticide manufacturing.
It is a normal contaminant in many foods, but a single high dose, usually in food, can trigger illness, London-based toxicologist John Henry said last month.
"We've never had a case like this
- a known case of large, severe dioxin poisoning," Henry said, leaving it unclear whether the dosage of dioxin administered to Yushchenko was meant only to make him ill or to kill him.
Tension in Ukraine's political crisis has abated with parliament's adoption of the electoral changes aimed at preventing fraud in return for handing over some presidential powers to the parliament.
Yushchenko wants to move his former Soviet republic closer to the West politically and is largely backed by the Ukrainian-speakers who want to end what they say has been mass corruption during the previous decade. The pro-Kremlin Yanukovych, who had the backing of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, draws his strength from the Russian-speaking, industrial east, which accounts for one-sixth of Ukraine's population of 48 million.
AP