President Victor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Moroz have agreed to hold early parliamentary elections on September 30.

The announcement early on Sunday morning followed hours of talks aimed at ending months of political standoff in Ukraine.

Yushchenko told reporters the Verkhovna Rada would convene on May 29-30 to adopt some necessary legal changes to organize the snap poll properly and conduct it in a democratic manner as well as a few economic bills to facilitate Ukraine’s WTO accession and raise salaries and pensions. Then the pro-presidential Our Ukraine party and Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc will hold conventions to officially relinquish their deputy status to create legal grounds for issuing another decree to disband parliament, he added. 

The president described today's compromise as a "truly wonderful result" and said the crisis was now "finished," thanking the country's political forces for their efforts during the negotiations.   

Yushchenko added that their agreement demonstrated that Ukraine’s democracy was “mature.” “Ukraine is coming out of this crisis much stronger. The path of negotiations… shows that we are now in the circumstances when democratic values become dominant, even during the settlement of such a serious political crisis,” he said.