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."
Well I'm hesitant to point out that his eyes are a different color because photos have a tendency to belie eye color. But the obvious is how grotesque a transformation we are seeing and no plausible explanation of how such a transformation is biologically possible. It's simply put out that he is poisoned and that's why he looks like this and we're all supposed to say, "oh, okay!" and move on? If I showed up with a third eye in the middle of my forehead one day and blamed it on a bad steak I'd eaten the week before, would you just accept that without a plausible explanation?
VIGILANT security officers have found a substance suspected to be arsenic in soup to be served to Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla.
Bail police spokesman Antonius Reniban said the soup had been prepared for Mr Kalla while he was at an event for the Golkar party, whose chairmanship he will seek during a vote on Sunday.
"We suspect it contains arsenic. The vice-president's (security) team found it," Mr Reniban said. "The first finding indicated it contains 0.1 milligrams of that substance per litre. We do not know if it is accurate and whether it is deadly or not."
He said the substance was detected in the soto, a traditional Indonesian soup, on Wednesday, but gave no further details.
Dino Patti Djalal, a spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said while he could not confirm the incident, checking food prepared for the president and his deputy was standard procedure.
It is the second case of suspected arsenic poisoning in Indonesia in recent months, following the death of a prominent human rights activist on a flight to Amsterdam in September. Police are investigating that case.
Golkar, Indonesia's most powerful party in parliament, will elect a new leader on Sunday. A Kalla win could make life easier in the legislature for Mr Yudhoyono.
The two strongest candidates include the incumbent and favourite, Akbar Tandjung, and Mr Kalla, who joined forces with Mr Yudhoyono ahead of presidential elections this year.
A win for Mr Kalla could turn Golkar into an ally for Mr Yudhoyono.
A Tandjung victory would be bad news, keeping Golkar aligned with other parties in an opposition bloc.
12-13-2004 07:30 PM
this sounds like a bad soap opera. Oh No! The dog was poisoned!??!
