UKRAINIAN BUDGET REJECTED, ELECTION CAMPAIGN DELAYED. The parliament on 10 October refused to approve President Leonid Kuchma's state budget, ITAR-TASS reported. Many Ukrainian commentators suggested that lawmakers had withheld their approval to pressure Kuchma into signing the recently passed election law. As a result of Kuchma's refusal to sign that legislation, the campaign for the parliamentary elections, which was scheduled to begin on 11 October, has been delayed. (According to the bill awaiting Kuchma's signature, the campaign can begin only 170 days before the vote.) The Communists, the Progressive Socialist Party, the Reform and Order Party, and the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists nevertheless went ahead with their campaign meetings on 11-12 October.