KIEV, Feb. 27 – Ukraine’s political leaders on Friday agreed to join forces within days to draft measures helping Ukraine to resume borrowing from the International Monetary Fund and allowing the country to avert default.

The agreement, reached at a meeting between President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and leaders of Parliament and opposition, is the first serious attempt to tackle the crisis plaguing Ukraine since October.

Ukrainian officials were forced to react after the IMF, citing the government’s failure to stick to an anti-crisis policy, has postponed disbursements within $16.4 billion loan, increasing the chance that the country may default on its debts.

Ukraine’s credit ratings were downgraded by Standards & Poor’s on Wednesday to levels indicating vulnerability to default amid concerns over the government’s failure to resume cooperation with the IMF.

At the meeting, Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, opposition leader Mykola Azarov and National Bank of Ukraine Governor Volodymyr Stelmakh agreed that the joint action was crucial for resuming cooperation with the IMF.

“We have to appeal to the IMF with the program of actions underscoring that all branches of power want to do to overcome the crisis,” Anatoliy Shapovalov, the first deputy governor of the NBU, said.

“A team has been created that will draft a letter of intent that will be signed on Tuesday and sent to the IMF, allowing to resume the cooperation,” Shapovalov said.

The team will also focus on drafting the anti-crisis measures to make sure they get support from across political spectrum for a quick approval in Parliament.

Yushchenko said the depth of the measures will be the litmus test of whether the parties are capable of assuming political responsibility for unpopular measures.

“The depth of the plan will show the readiness of the parties to assume political responsibility for decisions that will not be easy,” Yushchenko said after the meeting.

Meanwhile, the parties also apparently agreed to leave Stelmakh as the governor of the NBU through the end of the year despite earlier pressure from Tymoshenko that he must step down, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia weekly reported Saturday citing people familiar with the situation.

Tymoshenko has been criticizing Stelmakh for the NBU’s decision to let the hryvnia lose value fast against the U.S. dollar over the past six months.

The hryvnia lost more than 50% of its value against the dollar, one of the worst such indicators in the world, underscoring the depth of the economic crisis that Ukraine faces.

At the meeting, Stelmakh apparently assured the prime minister that the NBU will try to prevent any further depreciation of the hryvnia through interventions, and will discourage banks from betting on the hryvnia’s further decline, the people said.

The NBU, whose forex reserves dropped to below $27 billion, has spent more than $3 billion on currency interventions since the beginning of the year.

Ukraine seeks to get at least $9.6 billion from the IMF this year to help the NBU fend off attacks on the hryvnia and to boost confidence in the country’s economy, Shapovalov said. (tl/ez)