On May 27, President Kuchma said he doubted that the...

On May 27, President Kuchma said he doubted that the country's Parliament would vote to abolish capital punishment. His spokesman Alexander Martynenko said that Kuchma made this known at a meeting with a delegation of Norwegian lawmakers led by President Kirsti Kolle Grondahl. Kuchma objected to "the purely arithmetical approach" to the criteria for a country's membership in the Council of Europe, which entails a count of fulfilled and unfulfilled promises. Kuchma urged members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to take into account the peculiarities of the transitional period in Ukraine and its specific historical features affecting the mentality of the state and its attitude toward legal institutions. The Norwegian parliamentary speaker said that the issue of the abolition of the death penalty is a principal issue for the Council of Europe.