Ukraine's former Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych, has said he can never accept the final, official results of the re-run presidential election. Mr. Yanukovych says he will file another appeal of the election.
Mr. Yanukovych, initially declared the winner of the flawed first-round run-off, says he will never recognize the legitimacy of the repeat presidential election or its final result declaring Viktor Yushchenko the winner.
According to the results released by Ukraine's Central Election Commission (CEC) late Monday, Mr. Yushchenko swept the poll by more than two million votes.
During a news conference in Kiev, Mr. Yanukovych promised to appeal the results before the nation's highest court. He told reporters the results declared by Ukraine's CEC give his team a convincing basis to file a claim.
But in a departure from the earlier appeals he has filed, Mr. Yanukovych also mentions taking his claims to the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe.
Mr. Yanukovych stressed that as a European court, he felt the Council of Europe would be more impartial in addressing his claims than, he alleges, the Ukrainian court system.
Lawyers for Mr. Yanukovych say they expect his appeal to be filed Wednesday.
The date is important because parliament cannot set a date for the inauguration until all legal claims have been exhausted.
Mr. Yushchenko is expected to take the official oath of office during a swearing-in ceremony in parliament. A more symbolic inauguration is to follow on Kiev's central square, which was the staging point for the massive opposition street protests that secured his victory.
The head of the new president-elect's campaign team, Oleksandr Zinchenko, says the inauguration will be flashy and interesting for the tens-of-thousands of Ukrainians expected to return to the square.
