Companies@UA: База компаний Украины

Kyiv, August 4 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has said that President Viktor Yuschenko is using the disruption of the finals of the Euro 2012 European Football Championship in Ukraine as the main weapon in his struggle against her during the upcoming presidential election.

"I state with regret that resistance by the head of state to holding Euro 2012 is of a cruel nature in respect to Ukraine, and the suspicion arises that the disruption of the championship has become the basis and an unfair tactic [used by President] Viktor Yuschenko in his struggle against me as an opponent during the upcoming presidential election," she said in a statement on the presidential veto of the law on allocating funds for Euro 2012, which was made available by the Ukrainian government on Tuesday.

"Vetoing anti-crisis laws and blocking anti-crisis government resolutions has become a tradition for the president, an overall rule. One can, of course, fight one's rivals but one cannot harm the country in doing so," she said.

Yet "despite Yuschenko's resistance, the veto on the law on Euro 2012 will be overturned, the money will be released, and the championship itself will be held in Ukraine - and held successfully as well," Tymoshenko said

Yuschenko vetoed an amendment to the 2009 budget under which the central bank was to allocate UAH 9.8 billion to finance the construction of facilities for Euro 2012.

The day before, the head of the social and economic service of the Presidential Secretariat, Roman Zhukovsky, said the president was proposing that Euro 2012 projects be funded by banks that have unused money.

It was banks that had started funding the construction of a stadium in Lviv that the government had been unable to raise money for since the beginning of the year.