KIEV, Feb. 25 – President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday dismissed calls from former president Leonid Kravchuk to resign as a PR campaign used by undisclosed politicians, but said the next election will be a turning point for Ukraine.

Kravchuk, in a televised statement on Tuesday, urged Yushchneko to resign to open way for the early election. Media reports said Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s campaign staff had been arranging the statement to be aired.

“Many ‘heroes’ will be pulled from the past that will be asked to work at the upcoming election campaign,” Yushchenko said in an interview with The Associated Press, according to his press service. “I am convinced that politicians who lived through their historical time must not be pulled from naphthalene.”

The next presidential election is due in January 2010, but the exact date is yet to be approved by Parliament.

The early presidential election would benefit Tymoshenko, whose popularity rating has been dwindling fast in the wake of the government’s failure to tackle severe economic crisis.

Yushchenko and Tymoshenko differ drastically on how to tackle the economic crisis. The president has called for slashing budget spending to eliminate budget gap, while the prime minister has been seeking to keep spending high despite soaring budget deficit.

Yushchenko on Wednesday again called the government to take “tough” and “non-populist” measures.

“A politician that takes care of the country, not of the presidential election, must be tough, professional, non-populist and do the right thing,” Yushchenko said. “It’s hard to conduct a policy like this, but it’s my credo.”

Kravchuk, the first Ukrainian president under independence, started his term on Dec. 5, 1991 and finished it on July 19, 1994, after himself agreeing to call an early presidential election, which he lost to long-time political rival Leonid Kuchma, who had been prime minister.

This is not the first time that Kravchuk attacked Yushchenko by vigorously defending Tymoshenko over the past four years.

In the fall of 2005, shortly after Yushchenko dismissed Tymoshenko from the post of the prime minister amid corruption scandal, Kravchuk made announcement alleging that Yushchneko’s presidential campaign had been financed by Boris Berezovskiy, a London-based exiled Russian oligarch.

People familiar with the matter said the announcement was part of Tymoshenko’s plan to oust Yushchenko by canceling his presidential election victory in court. The plan, however, never materialized.

Yushchenko also took a moment to snub Kravchuk’s poor economic policies by citing the example of “kravchuchka,” a special shopping cart people had stated to use during his presidency while searching for basic necessities in stores.

“Those people that lived in 1990s, they may forget who is Leonid Makarovych, but they will never forget what is ‘kravchuchka,’ this was the symbol of our decline, first of all social one. Let that time never come back.” (tl/ez)