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KIEV : The two candidates in Ukraine's presidential race made a last-minute push for votes on Friday, the final day of legally permitted campaigning, as security was stepped up to prevent post-election clashes.
The two rivals, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and pro-Russian opposition leader Viktor Yanukovich, addressed their supporters at duelling rallies in central Kiev just a few hundred metres (yards) apart.
Yanukovich, seen as the frontrunner in Sunday's run-off election after beating Tymoshenko by 10 percent in first-round polls last month, predicted victory over his rival who came to power in the 2004 Orange Revolution.
"The hour of our victory is near. February 7 will be the last day of the Orange era. For the past five years we have seen how they ruined our country," he told a crowd of more than 1,000 supporters.
Thumping rock music from the Yanukovich rally could be heard at Tymoshenko's somber "prayer for Ukraine", which was held outside Kiev's 11th-century Saint Sophia's Cathedral and drew hundreds of her backers.
"I ask God to give us wisdom, and I ask him to forgive all the unjust and dishonest acts committed by the authorities, which I represent too," said Tymoshenko, as she shared a stage with bearded Orthodox priests.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko ordered security forces to "cut short any manifestation of terrorism," according to comments released by his press service.
One of the measures ordered by Yushchenko was to boost security at the building of the Central Elections Commission in Kiev, where votes will be counted.
No campaigning is permitted on Saturday. Voters will go to the polls Sunday to choose the next leader of Ukraine, a strategically located country of 46 million people that gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Tensions mounted this week as Tymoshenko accused Yanukovich of plotting to rig the vote and warned that she would mobilise her supporters for mass street protests in the event of vote fraud.
Supporters of Yanukovich, who has been riding high on a wave of discontent with the government's handling of the global economic crisis, dismissed her threat.
"What Ukraine needs now is bread, not revolution," Anna German, a prominent ally of Yanukovich and member of parliament from his Regions Party, said in a statement posted on the party's website.
Yanukovich's camp has in turn accused Tymoshenko and her supporters of planning to steal the election.
Earlier Friday Yanukovich met with Russia's ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, and pledged to improve ties with Moscow that deteriorated after the pro-Western Orange Revolution as Ukraine sought to join the NATO military alliance.
"I think our first task is simple: to turn the page on the past five years, leave them in the past and to continue the good, old traditions," Yanukovich told the envoy, according to a statement on his party's website.
Yanukovich is seeking to make a political comeback after his humiliating defeat in 2004.
He was initially declared the winner in a disputed presidential election, but after the Orange Revolution protests, Ukraine's supreme court rejected the results as fraudulent and ordered new polls, which Yanukovich lost.
Yanukovich's base is in the country's Russian-speaking east and south, while Tymoshenko has the most support in the western and central regions, where Ukrainian nationalist sentiment is stronger.
Tymoshenko has cast herself as a pro-European champion of democracy, but she also has friendly ties with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and she has been criticised as an opportunist who tacks with the political wind.
- AFP /ls
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