KIEV, Dec 6 (AFP) - The regional head of a US pro-democracy programme said Monday that the peaceful mass protests over rigged presidential elections in Ukraine should inspire democratic change in neighbouring Russia and Belarus.
John Kubiniec of Freedom House, which spent several million dollars of US taxpayers' money on efforts to prevent fraud in the Ukrainian presidential poll and to encourage voter participation, said other ex-Soviet republics could learn from the experience.
"If there is a free and fair election in Ukraine, this will be an inspiration for that to happen further eastwards," he told AFP by telephone from Warsaw.
"It's going to have an impact on fledgling democracy in Russia and Belarus, but it will be gradual," Kubiniec added.
In Belarus, hardline President Alexander Lukashenko recently passed a referendum allowing him to keep extending his mandate indefinitely while under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has turned into an increasingly authoritarian state.
Ukraine is to hold a fresh runoff vote on December 26 after the supreme court endorsed the pro-Western opposition's claims of massive fraud in last month's election, won officially by the pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.
Russia, which publicly backed the Kremlin-friendly candidate, has angrily accused the United States of fomenting the weeks of street protests in Ukraine in order to extend its influence in the former Soviet Union.
Kubiniec dismissed that as "paranoia," saying that Freedom House had not funnelled any money to the "orange revolution" of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko.
"We have worked to try and strengthen the young democracy in Ukraine but what has happened is 99.9 percent the Ukrainian people," he said.
Among other activities, the US organisation trained 5,000 opposition party poll observers, funded a parallel vote count and paid for 1,000 European non-government election monitors during the November 21 ballot.
Despite the Ukrainian opposition's apparent success, Kubiniec said that Ukraine's outgoing leader Leonid Kuchma could still try to fix the results of the new poll and warned it was a long road ahead in Russia and Belarus.
"One of the clear lessons is that this is a system that has not given up. The structure of power is very strong," he said.
12/06/2004 15:04 GMT - AFP