Ukrainian web site says president less than liberal in petrol crisis.

(From BBC Monitoring International Reports)

Although intervention by President Viktor Yushchenko has brought petrol back to filling stations, he has failed to solve the problem of the availability and prices of fuel in the long term, an expert has said. By extending personal guarantees to oil traders, Yushchenko offered them a carrot while Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko had offered them a stick, but the overall policy remains faulty. The expert cast doubt on Yushchenko's orders to hand state-held stakes in oil refineries to the Ukrnafta company and also for the state to purchase large stakes in privately-owned refineries, noting this is without precedent. The following is the text of the article by Ihor Lutsenko, entitled "Petrol Crises. Part Two", published on the Ukrainian web site Ukrayinska Pravda on 24 May, subheadings have been inserted editorially:

Failure to solve the problem

[Ukrainian President Viktor] Yushchenko's interference in the course of events on the oil market has not resolved the problems on the petrol and diesel fuel markets. On the contrary, more questions than answers remain after an analysis of the president's orders. The crisis is being prolonged and is taking on a different form.

What Tymoshenko tried to achieve with a stick, Yushchenko got thanks to a carrot. But one can hardly say his approach is more based on market principles than hers. …