The presidential commission on pardons, while considering a request to pardon former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, should probably wait until the end of the trial on her alleged involvement in the contract killing of Ukrainian MP Yevhen Scherban, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has said.

"I just cannot imagine how the commission on pardons can make a decision if the trial on charges of the contract killing is underway," he said at a meeting with foreign journalists in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Azarov said that charges brought against one politician regarding the contract killing of another is a very serious fact and that Tymoshenko herself should be interested in the speedy completion of this public process.

While commenting on the earlier court decisions on Tymoshenko, Azarov did not agree with estimates that any mistakes of the judicial system were established in this process. He said that the signing of a disadvantageous gas contract and the "falsification of a government protocol" were real facts.

He said that the question of pardoning Tymoshenko only "on humanitarian grounds" could be raised after all legal procedures in this process are completed.

"But it's not in my competence," Azarov said.

As reported, more than 20 women MPs, including Lilia Hrynevych, Liudmyla Denisova, Oleksandra Kuzhel, Iryna Lutsenko, and Maria Matios, signed the petition to pardon Tymoshenko and sent it to President Viktor Yanukovych on April 18.

More than 100 various petitions for pardoning Tymoshenko have been sent to the president since the ex-premier's imprisonment.