KIEV, Feb 7 (AFP) - Ukrainian government officials at all levels must respect a new code of conduct barring them from any involvement in business, newly-elected President Viktor Yushchenko announced on Monday as part of a corruption crackdown.
"Politics and the world of business will be totally separate and you will witness this in the next seven to 10 days," Yushchenko was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency during a visit to his home region of Sumy, in northeast Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader said that any person working in a ministry or public administration or planning to do so would have to sell any stake they held in a firm, including a family-owned one.
"If I have proof (...) that a person using his position as regional chief has protected a family business, I give you my word that it will be enough for this person to be fired," said Yushchenko.
The new pro-Western leader has vowed to cut the shady ties between government and business clans that existed under the previous regime, especially in the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine.
The new interior minister, Socialist Yury Lutsenko, a veteran street protestor who clashed with police several years ago during a rally against former president Leonid Kuchma, said that two months from now the police would be purged of its "dishonest" elements.
"It is necessary to depoliticize and decriminalize the police," added Lutsenko quoted by Interfax-Ukraine.
In her speech last week when she won approval from the Ukrainian parliament as prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko said that one of the government's top priorities would be to "destroy the vertical of corruption."
02/07/2005 17:13 GMT - AFP