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UKRAINIAN OPPOSITION CALLS FOR ANTIPRESIDENTIAL RALLY ON 24 SEPTEMBER... Several hundred opposition activists held meetings on Kyiv's Independence Square on 20 and 21 September in which they called on people to take part in a large-scale antipresidential rally in front of the parliamentary building on 24 September, UNIAN reported. According to organizers, people should gather on 24 September to demand that the Verkhovna Rada include the question of President Leonid Kuchma's impeachment on its agenda. Last week, lawmaker Hryhoriy Omelchenko submitted to the parliament a draft resolution calling for Kuchma's impeachment. JM

...AS AUTHORITIES RELEASE DEMONSTRATORS ARRESTED LAST WEEK... Ukrainian authorities released the last nine protesters who had been jailed after riot police broke up their tent camp outside the president's office on 17 September, but ordered them not to leave their home cities pending the conclusion of criminal investigations, Ukrainian media reported. "[We] decided not to apply extreme measures of punishment against them, but to take more humane measures," the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor-General's Office said in a joint statement. JM

...AND POLICE BREAK UP TENT CAMP IN KHARKIV. Before dawn on 22 September, police dismantled four tents pitched by activists of the "Rise Up, Ukraine!" protest campaign in downtown Kharkiv the previous day, UNIAN reported. Several opposition activists remain at the site and are collecting signatures under an appeal demanding the ouster of President Kuchma and Kharkiv Oblast administration head Yevhen Kushnyarov. JM