KIEV, Dec. 3 - President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine-People's Self-defense on Monday officially approved the nomination of Arseniy Yatseniuk, a pragmatic pro-Western foreign minister, as speaker of Parliament.

The move shows the lawmakers have dropped their previous opposition to Yushcheko's plan to replace Our Ukraine-People's Self-defense leader Viacheslav Kyrylenko with Yatseniuk.

Our Ukraine-People's Self-defense controls 72 seats in the 450-seat Parliament and "almost all lawmakers" at a special meeting voted to approvethe nomination, Yuriy Kostenko, a senior Our Ukraine-People's Self-defense member, said.

The development allows the party to officially nominate Yatseniuk at a session of Parliament on Tuesday, suggesting that Parliament.

"Tomorrow, all lawmakers from the group will stick to their decision," Kyrylenko said. "We will do our best to make sure that our first personnel decision is approved."

The successful vote for Yatseniuk will be a step towards nomination of Yulia Tymoshenko as Ukraine's next prime minister. Tymoshenko assured Our Ukraine-People's Self-defense that the group's all 156 lawmakers would cast their votes in favor of
Yatseniuk, technically allowing him to score at least 228 votes. He needs 226 votes to get the job.

Yushchenko for the past week has been seeking to replace Kyrylenko with a stronger candidate, but Our Ukraine-People's Self-defense had rejected the replacement at a meeting with the president two weeks ago.

The refusal led to a split within Our Ukraine-People's Self-defense, at least until Kyrylenko finally decided to withdraw his nomination after a meeting with Yushchenko last week.

Analysts said that Yushchenko wants to balance out Tymoshenko with Yatseniuk to prevent controversial and populist economic initiatives that may have been otherwise implemented by her government.

For example, Tymoshenko promised to pay out within two years billions of hryvnias to millions of people that lost their savings due to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Economists said this could trigger major inflation, at 40% annually.

Yatseniuk has a strong economic and financial background. He worked as the acting governor of the National Bank of Ukraine in 2004, as the economy minister in 2005-2006, followed by a top position at the Yushchenko office.

As the NBU governor, Yatseniuk authorized spending $2 billion, or about 20% of the NBU's foreign exchange reserves between September and December 2004 to support the hryvnia.

The move, praised by analysts, had helped to fend off a run on the national currency, preventing its major depreciation against the U.S. dollar. (nr/ez)