KIEV, Oct. 21 – President Viktor Yushchenko’s economic rescue package was stalled in Parliament on Tuesday after Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s lawmakers blocked the podium, making the session of the legislature impossible.

Tymoshenko, who is desperately seeking to stop the Dec. 14 early election, said the lawmakers were seeking to prevent approval of a bill that opens financing for the vote.

“I would like to look in the eyes of that official or creative fellow who had suggested to make a pie out of bills aimed at financial stabilization with a poisonous stuff of spending almost half a billion hryvnias on the election,” Tymoshenko said.

The early election is expected to cost about 440 million hryvnias, but Tymoshenko, who desperately seeks to stay as the prime minister, said the money should have been better spent on financial stabilization.

The development stalls a set of economic and financial measures designed by Yushchenko to prevent financial crisis in Ukraine and anticipate creation of a multi-billion dollar “stabilization” fund that may be used to buy defaulting banks and other assets.

Yushchenko suggested the package on Monday, three weeks after Ukraine’s banking sector and the hryvnia had experienced pressures, while the government had failed to come up with a clear strategy of how to deal with the crisis.

Tymoshenko last week sought to distance herself from the crisis by suggesting that it was the job for the National Bank of Ukraine and Yushchenko to deal with the crisis.

But on Tuesday Tymoshenko scrambled to come up with her own rescue package, which she said will be ready in about “one or two days.”

“We need a day or two to agree on an anti-crisis bill with experts and with international financial institutions,” Tymoshenko said at a meeting with leading businessmen. “We will have to tighten our belts a little bit.”

Tymoshenko did not disclose any details about the bill, but said the government would introduce “moratorium” on increasing social spending during the next year.

The development underscores increasing rivalry between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko, the two figures that are widely expected to compete against each other at the next presidential election in early 2010.

The rivalry led to the collapse of their coalition in September and subsequent inability to form a new coalition with the next 30 days, forcing Yushchenko to issue a decree dismissing Parliament and calling the early election in December.

Yushchenko blamed the government of Tymoshenko for sticking to populist initiatives that had greatly increased social spending, but reduced investments on economic development.

The measures the president announced on Monday go beyond financial sector and also target steel sector, the biggest earner of hard currency, and other issues.

The package includes creation of the state stabilization fund, worth “tens of billions of hryvnias,” which will be used to acquire biggest banks or other important businesses that may experience liquidity problems.

The measures also call for increasing to 100,000 hryvnias, or $20,000, the maximum guarantee of deposits, up from 50,000 hryvnias currently, to calm down the people and to stop the run on deposits. The increase covers up to 98% of deposits currently kept in Ukrainian banks, he said.

The other measures call for slashing by 20% spending on state bureaucracy, review of imports duties to reduce imports, cutting populist social spending and eliminating budget deficits in 2008 and 2009.

The package also addresses potential problem of repayment of almost $40 billion in corporate foreign debts by some banks and companies. Yushchenko said a special team has been already working on ways of optimizing the payments.

The International Monetary Fund, which is in talks with Ukraine over up to $14 billion loan, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development may be asked to help to handle those payments, he said. (tl/ez)