Protesters demand president's resignation

KIEV (AP):

Ukraine's political opposition yesterday said it would call a country-wide general strike to force the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovich's government after police used batons and stun grenades to break up pro-Europe protests.

Helmeted police bearing white shields stormed an encampment of protesters in Kiev's Independence Square as they sang songs and warmed themselves by campfires, the opposition said.

Tension had been building since Friday, when around 10,000 protesters crowded into the centre of Ukraine's capital to demand the president's resignation after he shelved a landmark agreement with the European Union in favour of closer ties with Russia.

Widespread protests

Protests have been held in Kiev for the past week since Yanukovych backed away from the agreement.

The square has symbolic weight as the iconic epicentre of the 2004 mass protests known as the Orange Revolution, which forced the rerun of a fraud-tainted presidential election.

Yanukovych, the focus of those protests, is unlikely to risk allowing another such huge demonstration of discontent.

"We will conduct massive protest actions in all of Ukraine. They must witness our strength," declared Arseniy Yatsenyuk, an ally of Yanukovych's arch-foe, the jailed former premier Yulia Tymoshenko.

He said the opposition "will do everything" to try to force a presidential election before its scheduled date in 2015.

"Our right to live in a European country was stolen," world boxing champion and prominent opposition figure Vitaly Klitschko said.