Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

KYIV, March 21 - A lawyer for former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who is jailed in the United States where he has been charged with money laundering, appealed to a Ukrainian court Thursday to restore his parliamentary immunity. Ukraine's parliament lifted Lazarenko's immunity from prosecution twice: in 1999 in connection with the embezzlement charges and this February after Ukrainian prosecutors accused him of involvement in contract killings.

A district court in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv is expected to review the appeal by Lazarenko's lawyer Maryna Dovhopola on Friday, according to the Interfax news agency. Dovhopola said Lazarenko protested parliament's decision in 1999, but court hearings concerning the appeal had been delayed since then. Lazarenko will soon lodge another protest against the second decision to strip him of his parliamentary seat and immunity, Dovhopola said. "We consider this parliament's decision illegal," Dovhopola was quoted by Interfax as saying.

Lazarenko, one of post-Soviet Ukraine's most controversial public figures, is in a San Francisco jail on U.S. charges of conspiracy, money laundering and transporting stolen property. He has pleaded innocent. Lazarenko was appointed prime minister in 1996 and headed Ukraine's government for 13 months, then later became a member of parliament. He fled Ukraine for the United States in February 1999 after Ukrainian authorities accused him of embezzling. In June 2000, a Swiss court gave Lazarenko an 18-month suspended sentence for money laundering.