KIEV, Jan. 28 – Parliament, led by the opposition Regions Party, on Thursday dismissed Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, dealing a major blow to Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko just 10 days before the presidential vote.

The motion was backed by 231 lawmakers in the 450-seat Parliament, and was supported by the Regions Party, the Communist Party and the group loyal to Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn.

Tymoshenko reacted immediately by calling an emergency meeting of the government at which she had appointed Lutsenko as the acting interior minister.

The development is a serious setback for Tymoshenko, who runs against Regions Party leader Viktor Yanukovych in the runoff presidential vote on February 7.

The minister controls 300,000-strong police force throughout Ukraine and Lutsenko has been openly supporting – and even campaigning for – Tymoshenko.

The acting minister is a politically much weaker figure that will seriously weaken Tymoshenko’s control over the police force, analysts said.

“Tymoshenko and Lutsenko manipulate the society and want to disrupt the election,” Yanukovych said Thursday in Simferopol.

The Regions Party accused Lutsenko of openly supporting for Tymoshenko, insisting that the interior minister must not be involved in politics.

But the Tymoshenko group responded by accusing the Regions Party of dismissing Lutsenko for political reasons in order to be able to falsify the vote.

“There was not even a single reason for the dismissal of Lutsenko, and that’s why all members of the Cabinet of Ministers had voted to appoint him the acting minister,” Oleksandr Turchynov, the first deputy prime minister and the chief of Tymoshenko’s campaign.

The make the appointment, the government also created a new position for Lutsenko at the ministry – the first deputy interior minister.

Yanukovych led Tymoshenko by 10 percentage points, a comfortable margin, after the first round of presidential election on January 17. Most opinion polls suggest that Yanukovych will win the presidency in the runoff.

Lutsenko “must be a man and stop humiliating himself and to step down as the interior minister,” Yanukovych said.

The Regions Party called for the dismissal of Lutsenko shortly after the police had sided with the Tymoshenko team in a conflict over a company that is printing ballots for the runoff vote.

The Tymoshenko government, without any immediate reason, moved to reshuffle the top management of the Ukrayina company two weeks before the runoff vote.

President Viktor Yushchenko sought Lutsenko’s dismissal twice last year – for embarrassing drunken melee and arrest in Germany, and for alleged failure to curb corruption.

But the minister survived due to political support from Tymoshenko. (tl/ez)