Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Coal, is this true?

"Dioxin is not a poison with an immediate effect, its toxicity builds up over years, dozens of years, and it is impossible to receive a dose one day that would poison you the next," said Yuri Ostapenko, head of the Russian health ministry's poison centre.

-Am




Russia doubts poison claims
12/12/2004 15:40 - (SA)



Kiev - Ukraine's repeat election campaign officially kicked off on Sunday but the country's ruling elite was silent after news that Western-oriented opposition leader and presidential frontrunner Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned earlier in the race in this former Soviet republic.

Yushchenko, in Vienna where physicians said the mystery pre-election illness that dramatically disfigured his face had been caused as a result of ingesting poison, was shown on Ukrainian TV saying he was "very happy to be alive in this world today."

Amid speculation that the attempt to poison Yushchenko had been intended to kill him, as he has insisted, a senior European envoy was arriving in Kiev to check on the chances of the country holding a fair vote December 26.

But there was no immediate information on whom the Council of Europe's secretary general Terry Davis would meet amid struggles between Europe and Russia over influence in a country that has served in the past decade as a bridge between Moscow and the West.

And though officials were saying nothing, everywhere on the streets there was talk of Saturday's report of dioxin poisoning from the Austrian doctor who said Yushchenko's face had been disfigured so suddenly because he probably ingested the chemical in his food.

Speculation

The findings follow three months of speculation about an ailment that struck Yushchenko on September 6, leaving him in pain and barely recognisable with a severely disfigured face.

Yushchenko's doctor said in Austria that he has "a thousand times above the normal levels" of dioxin in his tissue and that it could have been fed to him by a foe.

Yushchenko was due to speak later on Sunday about the medical findings, which analysts say are likely to boost his election campaign.

He is currently on a campaign stump in Russian-leaning regions of Ukraine and his new campaign manager has so far refused to comment on the clinic's report.

The outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, who had groomed Yanukovich for the presidency after a 10-year rule, has also failed to comment on the doctor's report.

Yushchenko has repeatedly claimed that he was poisoned by political rivals.

And he is seen as the likely winner of an election to a November 21 vote that the former Soviet republic's supreme court agreed was mired by fraud.

Both camps have accused one another of fixing the results, but European observers sides with Yushchenko.

In Russia, which strongly supported Yanukovich, a health ministry official questioned the conclusions reached by the Austrian doctors.

"Dioxin is not a poison with an immediate effect, its toxicity builds up over years, dozens of years, and it is impossible to receive a dose one day that would poison you the next," said Yuri Ostapenko, head of the Russian health ministry's poison centre.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1634911,00.html