Ukraine's outgoing President Leonid Kuchma accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich Wednesday, but the country remains in political limbo during a drawn-out transition after last month's election. 

The president's office said Finance Minister Mykola Azarov would become acting prime minister, replacing Yanukovich who quit on New Year's Eve after losing the presidential poll.

The election commission met yesterday to finalize results that could at last see liberal Viktor Yushchenko crowned president.

There is little doubt he will take power some time this month.

But legal challenges mounted by Yanukovich -- who lost to Yushchenko after an earlier vote was annulled because of fraud -- have held up the transition.

In the days since the election, one member of the outgoing cabinet was found dead in his sauna with a gunshot to the head.

Other officials have been sacked by Kuchma and some are rumored to have left the country.

A meeting of the Central Election Commission scheduled for Tuesday, which was to have looked at the final results, was postponed without explanation.

It must still certify results from just 55 out of 225 regional commissions, but it may be barred declaring a winner until today at least.

More hurdles could follow in court.

When the commission finally met yesterday afternoon, the outgoing government will be holding its weekly cabinet meeting across town, perhaps not for the last time.

Yanukovich has not been seen in public since his New Year's Eve resignation speech, when he said he would continue to fight the election result even though he has no hope of success.

Meanwhile, Yushchenko's allies have been jockeying for position to become the country's new prime minister, while Yushchenko himself is on holiday and out of the spotlight.

Yulia Tymoshenko, one of Yushchenko's most radical and popular supporters, said in a television interview she believed Yushchenko had already decided to pick her.

It would be a controversial move, not least because Russia wants Tymoshenko on criminal charges related to energy business dealings in the 1990s. She said that was all in the past.

"I can put my hand on my heart and say that I have no links to any business, and more important, do not want any."

Other possible candidates for prime minister include Anatoly Kinakh, who was Yanukovich's predecessor, and Petro Poroshenko, head of parliament's budget committee.

(China Daily January 6, 2005)