Ukrainian premier calling for early presidential elections

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has called to hold the early presidential elections as soon as possible.

"The economic crisis will not end in a year or two years. The process of overcoming it will be gradual. This crisis is deepening political instability in Ukraine. The sooner the presidential elections are held the sooner we will be able to recover the country. We need the early elections, as soon as possible," she said in an interview with the French newspaper "Le Monde" on the eve of her working visit to France.

Tymoshenko said the president is seeing her not as a partner but as a rival in the upcoming presidential elections.

The premier stressed that during the Orange Revolution and then in 2007 she was the only person Yuschenko could rely on.

"I have never betrayed him. This struggle will end not with my destruction, but with his political suicide," Tymoshenko said.