Today I had a meeting with Sergij Golovatyj, MP and president of Ukrainian Legal Foundation. He was already Radical member in 1992 (he even was on the XXXVI congress) and today had joined both RP and Hands Off Cain for 1995 (paying $10).

We spoke also about the prospectives of the new Ukrainian Criminal Code in the context of capital punishment. Some previous information given by me had to be precised. He does not draft the Code. The special working group, composed from law scientists, first of all from Kharkov Academy of Law, do it. The code drafted by them still provides capital punishment, although the sphere of application is essentially reduced in comparison with the old one.

Approximately in January-February this draft code will be formally tabled into the parliament by the Council of Ministers and scheduled for the first reading (appr. February-March).

The Ukrainian Legal Foundation's participation in this process is to organize an expertize, first "Ukrainian", then - international. The Ukrainian one, in a form of workshop for specialists, they schedule for March. The international one - for April-May, also in a form of workshop or conference to be held in Kiev with participation of "foreign scientists, who could assist their Ukrainian colleagues in drafting the new laws".

The RP's and Cain's participation on that stage he see as participation in that international workshop. He is absolutely not in favour of any political campaign addressed to the Ukrainian parliament, telling that "it's better not touch this bullshit before time, and let's hope that this ignorants will just vote what the working group will table them".

He does not see any possibility to exclude death penalty from the draft code on the current stage of drafting, and the only possibility he considers - to repeat step by step "Russian experience": a) introducing life imprisonment as measure to replace capital punishment "in some cases", b) to form a good (from subjective point of view) commission for amnesty by president of the country, c) to achieve the de-facto moratory by means of this commission.

Concerning the 1995 conference in Russia on abolishing death penalty by 2000, he believes, that it is better not to do it as "a CIS conference", but to organize the Ukrainian one, the Moldavian one, the Middle Asian one, etc. Here I'm agree with him. It is unclear however, how to foudraise at least Russian conference, because till now the only money we got after the Izvestia advertising are 24 dollars 30 cents...