KIEV, Nov. 12 – European leaders will make perhaps their final attempt Tuesday to persuade President Viktor Yanukovych to release opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko to save important trade and political deals scheduled for next month.

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski and German President Christian Wulff are to meet Yanukovych in Wroclaw on Tuesday, according to Serhiy Liovochkin, Yanukovych’s chief of staff.

Yanukovych was invited by Komorowski to participate in a ceremony celebrating the 200th anniversary of Wroclaw University’s founding, but the trade and political deals will dominate the meetings.

“Taking into account the current Polish presidency in the European Union, obviously close attention will be paid to the issue of reaching the agreement on association between Ukraine and the EU by the end of the year,” Liovochkin said in a statement.

The arrest of Tymoshenko in August and her sentencing to seven years in prison last month for signing a controversial natural gas agreement with Russia in January 2009 raised concerns in Europe that Yanukovych may be trying to eliminate his political opponent.

These concerns may complicate or even derail the signing of the free trade and political association agreements between Ukraine and the EU that had been tentatively scheduled at a summit in Kiev on December 19.

EU leaders snubbed Yanukovych last month by cancelling a meeting with him in Brussels after Tymoshenko had been jailed.

Yanukovych has repeatedly promised European leaders over the past two months that measures will be taken to ease the pressure on Tymoshenko, including changing legislation that would lift her sentencing.

But nothing has been done so far. Instead, the authorities opened a number of new criminal investigations against Tymoshenko on charges some of which date back 15 years ago.

Aleksandr Kwasniewski, a former Polish president, said at a press conference in Warsaw on Friday that the Tymoshenko issue will dominate the talks between Yanukovych and the European leaders on Tuesday.

“It is hard to imagine success at the Ukraine-EU summit in Kiev unless there is a breakthrough in the Tymoshenko case,” Kwasniewski said, quoted by Unian news agency.

“Time is running out,” Kwasniewski said. “Suddenly, it may appear that we’re at a finish line, but nothing has happened, nothing has been signed, and we’re losing an opportunity for [Ukraine’s] European integration for many years to come.”

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said Ukraine and the EU on Friday reached a major progress in talks over the free trade and political association agreements by reaching compromises on all issues, but one.

“The only position has been left unsolved and that requires a compromise solution or taking a political decision,” Azarov said. “Our team insists that the agreement contains a perspective of EU membership. The EU is suggesting other wording.”

Some analysts said Yanukovych’s tough line on Ukraine’s EU accession could be a pretext to bin the EU pact next month, freeing him to consolidate power at home and to focus on Ukraine-Russia relations instead.

The new line on initialing could also be a face-saving exercise in case the EU side pulls back from the deal because of the Tymoshenko problem, the analysts said. (tl/ez)