KIEV, Sept. 10 – Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who has been seeking to trim President Viktor Yushchenko’s powers, resumed attempts to rewrite Ukraine’s constitution and plans to release new proposed amendments before the end of the month.

The push comes 3.5 months after the attempts were postponed, apparently after Yushchenko managed to persuade the Regions Party, the largest opposition group, to withdraw support.

But Tymoshenko, following weeks of secret talks in August, renewed her alliance with the Regions Party on Sept. 2, approving a number of bills seeking to cut Yushchenko’s powers.

“According to all calculations that we have, we need two-to-three weeks to work out the amendments, to conduct consultations with all experts and academic institutions,” Tymoshenko said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Tymoshenko, who did not unveil the nature of the amendments, said they will be discussed “very publicly.”

People familiar with Tymoshenko’s earlier attempts to change the constitution, said those amendments have been seeking to dramatically reduce the powers of the president and to de-facto create a two-party political system in Ukraine.

For example, the amendments discussed in May have been suggesting to hold Parliamentary elections in two rounds, putting on the ballot in the second round only the two most popular parties based on the first round.

The system would automatically provide unchallenged powers to the winning party, and to the prime minister, while the president would be left with little influence.

Tymoshenko hopes the two-party system would benefit her party, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, and the Regions Party, the largest opposition group, apparently leaving Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine and other parties outside Parliament.

Viktor Baloha, the chief of staff at the Yushchenko office, alleged that Tymoshenko had been working with Viktor Medvedchuk, the alleged mastermind of sweeping 2004 presidential election fraud that had started the Orange Revolution, to draft the latest amendments.

Vladislav Surkov, the first deputy chief of staff at the office of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the creator of Russia’s assertive “sovereign democracy” ideology, has been also helping to draft the amendments, according to Baloha.

Medvedchuk, who is known to have close personal relations with Medvedev, has already drafted Ukraine’s constitutional amendments that had been approved in November 2004 and that had reduced powers of Yushchenko from January 1, 2006.

Any constitutional amendments must first be approved by at least 226-seat majority in the 450-seat Parliament, and after a green light from the Constitutional Court, the same amendments must be approved by at least 300 votes.

Tymsohenko’s recent alliance with the Regions Party and the Communist Party, both increasingly pro-Moscow groups, has been mustering about 360 votes in Parliament, enough to get the amendments approved.

The approval of amendments is a lengthy process, which usually takes six months to a year.

But in May Tymoshenko has been considering holding an emergency session of Parliament to approve the amendments, a move that would greatly speed up the approval process.

Tymoshenko originally planned to approve the amendments before the end of 2008. (tl/ez)