Tymoshenko staff calls for partial recount of Ukraine election

"The Block of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT) agrees to a simultaneous recount of ballots in the east of Ukraine and Lviv province," said Vice Premier Oleksander Turchinov, in a statement made public by Tymoshenko's BYuT political party.

Tymoshenko made her first public appearance since the election at a cabinet meeting Thursday - but she said little about the election.

She made almost no reference to the election during the televised cabinet meeting, accusing victor Viktor Yanukovych's Regions Ukraine political party of reneging on pre-election commitments to voters by failing on Wednesday to support a social assistance bill in parliament.

"You see, they (Yanukovych and his allies) already are breaking their promises to help people," she said, in comments televised by the Channel 5 station.

Yanukovych, a former prime minister and a pro-Russia politician, defeated Tymoshenko by a 3.4 per centage-point margin in the Sunday poll, according to official results.

Turchinov and other Tymoshenko allies have alleged Yanukovych's edge came from vote fraud at voting stations in Ukraine's eastern provinces, while Yanukovych and his allies have alleged Tymoshenko's numbers were expanded by vote-rigging in Ukraine's western Lviv province.

Tymoshenko has apparently agreed to a count in the Lviv province to answer concerns of the Yanukovych camp.

International observers said the vote was free and fair, with some suggesting Tymoshenko, one of the leaders of Ukraine's 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution, admit she had been defeated in an honest poll.

Joschka Fischer, former German Foreign Minister, on Thursday added his voice to members of the international community calling on Tymoshenko to concede defeat.

"Tymoshenko would serve the legacy of the Orange Revolution and her country best were she to concede defeat, accept the elections were fair," Fischer said, in an opinion piece published in the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. //dpa