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Ukraine lawmakers have reopened their investigation in opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's disfiguring illness after doctors in Austria said he was poisoned.
Monday's decision by a parliamentary commission followed a similar move during the weekend by the country's prosecutor general.
"The results of the most recent expertise in Vienna are giving us grounds to renew our work," The Associated Press quoted lawmaker Volodymyr Sivkovych as saying.
"However, we are not convinced that deliberate poisoning can be proved."
Sivkovych, who supported Yushchenko's presidential opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, will lead the commission.
Sivkovych led an earlier commission that investigated the case in October. That panel decided Yushchenko had suffered a combination of a viral infection and several other diseases, AP reported.
Earlier Monday, Yushchenko said he was convinced Ukrainian authorities were behind the attempt to poison him with dioxin, but he declined to name anyone specific.
"If (the) General Prosecution of Ukraine will act according to the law, as I hope, Ukraine and the whole world will know who was in charge of it."
Yushchenko, who returned to Kiev after doctors in Austria confirmed the poisoning during the weekend, called Sunday for a "serious investigation" into the case after the December 26 election.
"Investigation will take some time," he said at Kiev airport. Yushchenko praised Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun for reopening the criminal investigation into his illness, AP said.
He said he hoped the investigation would be conducted after the rerun of the discredited presidential runoff because he didn't want the inquiry to influence the vote "either positively or negatively."
Prosecutors had closed their investigation before the November 21 runoff, saying they could not determine whether he was poisoned.
Yanukovych was declared the official winner of that vote, but Ukraine's Supreme Court threw out the results because of voting irregularities and ordered a repeat of the runoff.
Sivkovych said he had met with Piskun, and the lawmaker urged Yushchenko to hand over the Austrian doctors' test results to his panel and prosecutors immediately.
The lawmaker refused to comment on "speculation" over who was behind the poisoning, saying that "all those scenarios are more public relations than truth," AP reported.
'Rock solid' diagnosis
Meanwhile, the doctor who oversaw Yushchenko's treatment in Vienna said Sunday that the diagnosis of dioxin poisoning is "rock solid," but added that more information must be obtained before medical authorities can determine his prognosis.
Dr. Michael Zimpfer told CNN he based his conclusion on a physical examination of the patient and "various blood tests" carried out at Vienna's Rudolfinerhaus clinic and elsewhere.
Zimpfer told reporters the concentration of dioxin in Yushchenko's body was "1,000 times above the normal levels" and that he suspected "third-party involvement."
"We have sent samples to a lab within Europe and also to labs across the Atlantic Ocean that claim to have vast experience, and they came up with the results," Zimpfer told CNN.
Yushchenko has "a tremendous amount of dioxin in the blood," Zimpfer said, so much that "it's beyond the scale." (Full story)
In September, the 50-year-old opposition leader fell ill a day after attending a reception and dinner with Ukrainian security services leaders. It is believed that Yushchenko, who drank various liquids at the event, is the only one who became sick.
Yushchenko went to the Austrian hospital for treatment five days later. He suffered from a series of symptoms, including back pain, acute pancreatitis and nerve paralysis on the left side of his face.
Aides said if he had remained in Ukraine he could have died.
He resumed campaigning later in the month but with a pockmarked and badly disfigured face.
"I have heard a lot of stories and legends on how this poison has been delivered, where it has been produced, which secret services were used for delivering it in Ukraine," Yushchenko said early Monday.
"I am not eager to comment (on) all this stuff, because it's a very delicate point. I do not want to put any shade on somebody, before it was established by the court."
Source: CNN |
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this sounds like a bad soap opera. Oh No! The dog was poisoned!??!