Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has demanded that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych immediately publicize the text of a memorandum on Ukraine's participation in the Customs Union work planned to be signed in Minsk on May 31 and insists on postponing the signature of this document.

"I demand that you, Viktor Fedorovych [Yanukovych], immediately - today - publicize the text of the memorandum you are going to sign in Belarus tomorrow and give account to the Verkhovna Rada on what you are going to do to the fates of the 46 million Ukrainians," Tymoshenko said in a letter published on the Web site of the Batkivschyna Party on Thursday.

"You are not a slaveholder, Viktor Fedorovych, but only a politician hired for a temporary job, and therefore I demand that you postpone the signature of the memorandum for the time needed to discuss this document publicly and understand the Ukrainians' attitude toward it. You have no right to decide Ukraine's fate willfully, spontaneously, on a beach and without neckties, being guided solely by your own interests," Tymoshenko's letter says.

The ex-prime minister harshly criticized Yanukovych's remarks on this memorandum, noting that "such a step in its essence and spirit goes against Ukrainian laws, presidential decrees and Verkhovna Rada resolutions, which have clearly stipulated our European way for the short and long term," she said.

Yanukovych said following negotiations between the leaders of the countries comprising the Belarusian-Kazakh-Russian Customs Union, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in Astana on May 29 that a memorandum on Ukraine's participation in the Customs Union's work will be signed at a meeting of the CIS prime ministers in Minsk on May 31.