Kravchuk let off lightly by deputies

KIEV (Reuter) - Ukraine's parliament denounced President Leonid Kravchuk yesterday over nuclear arms and Russian nationalism in Crimea but took no punitive action against him.

Deputies accused Mr Kravchuk of betraying national interests by signing an agreement with the presidents of Russia and the United States to give up Ukraine's nuclear weapons. Some deputies called for his impeachment, others for a referendum on the accord.

Deputies also criticised Mr Kravchuk for failing to ban a presidential election in Ukraine's autonomous Crimean peninsula, which a Russian nationalist, Yuri Meshkov, is poised to win.

But in the end parliament referred the pact to commissions to determine whether it contradicted conditions on disarmament imposed by parliament last November.