KIEV, Dec. 17 – Our Ukraine-People’s Self-defense further challenged its leader President Viktor Yushchenko Monday by saying it needed more time to agree on the nominations to the government that had been made by the president.

“First, we have to decide on the fundamental issue, on the approval of the prime minister,” said Ruslan Kniazevych, an Our Ukraine-People’s Self-defense lawmaker. “Then we will take the time-out to get the group together and to decide on each minister nomination.”

The comment comes a day before Parliament is due to vote to approve the prime minister, to be followed by a vote to approve the entire Cabinet of Ministers.

The group led by Yulia Tymoshenko, the likely new prime minister, and Our Ukraine-People’s Self-defense, had earlier agreed to create a 50-50 government after the Sept. 30 snap election.

The constitution allows the president to nominate ministers of defense and foreign affairs, but Yushchenko used his power as the de-facto leader of Our Ukraine to nominate most of other ministers within the Our Ukraine quota, angering some influential members of the party who apparently want to have a greater say on the issue.

Yushchenko, who last week met Viacheslav Kyrylenko, the leader of Our Ukraine group in Parliament, to discuss the nominations, said on Saturday the party had mostly accepted the nominations.

But the comments on Monday show the problem still persists and may delay the formation of the government unless the party and the president can quickly agree on the nominations.

Pavlo Zhebrivskiy, another Our Ukraine member, said the group will take a 4-hour break after the prime minister vote on Tuesday to discuss the nominations. He said the party may make some changes to the nominations, but he did not elaborate.

“Such option is possible,” Zhebrivskiy said. “We have a major potential and many people that can take these or other posts.”

Our Ukraine-People’s Self-defense, which controls 72 seats in Parliament, was split last month when six of its members had refused to sign the coalition agreement with the group led by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

At least two of those six, including Yuriy Yekhanurov and Mykola Onyshchuk, were nominated by Yushchenko to the government, as the defense minister and the justice minister, respectively.

Other nominations included Volodymyr Ohryzko as the foreign minister, skipping Boris Tarasiuk, one of Our Ukraine leaders that had been widely taped for the post.

But the most controversial nomination was Vasyl Kremin, a member of SDPU(O) party, as the educations minister. Kremin was the educations minister in 2004 when the government had been widely using administrative pressure against Yushchenko, then the opposition presidential candidate.

Kremin is thought to have ordered pressure on students to force them to vote for the pro-government candidate at the time.

But Yushchenko defended Kremin and other nominations suggesting that all of them had the vision of reforms in the sectors, adding that some nominations were needed to “counterbalance” the prime minister, the speaker of Parliament and appointments to committees in Parliament.

Kniazevych said: “Until all nominations are approved by the party, we will not support any of the candidates from the party’s quota.” (tl/ez)