Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

KYIV, Nov 17 - Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma launched a broadside against his own government on Friday, apparently abandoning moves earlier this week to calm a row with his prime minister over energy policy. Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko made a veiled threat to resign a fortnight ago after Kuchma appeared to throw his weight behind a report which criticized the government for the ill-preparedness of the energy sector ahead of winter.

"No one's got it in for the government... but this team does have people in it whom I would have swept out of the government with a broom - I say that openly," Kuchma told an audience of around 1,500 students at Kiev university.

"And it's impossible to understand what it is that drives the prime minister to defend these people - I do not understand that," he said.

Kuchma did not say whom he was referring to, but he has in the past repeatedly criticized Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, an ally of Yushchenko who oversees the energy sector, which imports most of its supplies and suffers shortages.

The Yushchenko government, in place since last December, is seen by many Western observers as the best hope for forcing economic reforms through parliament and persuading the International Monetary Fund to resume a frozen $2.6 billion lending program.

Yushchenko was on a visit to Moscow on Friday, seeking to pacify Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov about huge gas debts and the theft of 10 billion cubic meters of gas each year from Russian firm Gazprom, whose pipelines cross Ukraine.

Some political analysts have said the government is unpopular among powerful businessmen, known as "oligarchs", for taking steps towards regulating the energy sector by prohibiting barter deals, which could conceal unfair trades.

The Ukrainian prime minister has made clear he will resign if Tymoshenko is forced out of office. She was accused of overstating energy supplies for the winter in the recent report to parliament, which she denied.

The saga seemed to have blown over earlier this week when Kuchma called for calm and said the government should get on with its job, following rumors printed in Russian and Ukrainian papers saying Kuchma meant to sack Yushchenko.

Yushchenko is Kuchma's fifth prime minister since the president was first elected in 1994. Kuchma sacked his long-serving foreign minister in September without explanation.