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Ukraine's Prime Minister and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko speaks to the media in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010. AP Ukrainian and Russian news reports say that Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has refused to concede Ukraine's presidential race to opposition leader Victor Yanukovych.

Tymoshenko told officials with her party that she will "never recognize" the legitimacy of Sunday's runoff election, the respected Ukrainskaya Pravda Web site and Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The reports said Tymoshenko has instructed lawyers to mount a legal challenge and plans to demand a third round of voting.

Tymoshenko has not yet issued any protest calls and on Monday she canceled two planned news conferences. She plans a news conference later Feb. 9.

Yanukovych is leading in the vote by 3.47 percent with almost all the ballots counted. Unlike past elections in Ukraine, international monitors have praised this vote as being free and fair.

Tymoshenko's campaign declined to comment on the reports, but her allies said they were getting ready to challenge the result.

"A decision has been taken to challenge results in the individual polling stations and to demand a recount at those stations," said Yelena Shustik, a deputy with the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc in parliament.

There are signs of dissent within Tymoshenko party ranks, however.

Ukrainskaya Pravda and ITAR-Tass cite deputy speaker Mykola Tomenko, also a member of Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, as saying at a party meeting Monday that Tymoshenko should accept defeat and take up her new role as the opposition.

Yanukovych's Party of Regions, meanwhile, rejected calls for further scrutiny of the election.

"There will be no third round," Mykola Azarov, deputy head of the Party of Regions, told parliament on Tuesday. "They are dragging us into an unnecessary war."

On Tuesday evening, Yanukovych is due to address thousands of his supporters, who have assembled outside the headquarters of the Central Election Commission in Kiev. Yanukovych's team say it organized the meeting to defend the results of the election.

In comments apparently directed at Tymoshenko, a top European election observer urged Ukraine's politicians to heed the official vote tally.

"It is now time for the country's political leaders to listen to the people's verdict and make sure that the transition of power is peaceful and constructive," said Joao Soares, head of the observation mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Parliamentary Assembly.