Kuchma Conversations

[Nonson]

KYIV, Jan. 12 √ Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz, in a meeting of deputy factions and Council of European representatives on Thursday, stated that a former SBU officer recorded 300 hours of conversations by the president.

"300 hours, that is not 24 minutes," Moroz said.

According to this information, Moroz said, the General Prosecutor Mykhailo Potebenko's conclusion regarding taped conversations linking President Leonid Kuchma and high ranking officials to the September disappearance of journalist, Georgy Gongadze, does not appear real.

On Wednesday, in his scheduled presentation to Parliament a report on the progress of the Gongadze investigation, Potebenko stated that the tape alledgedly made by the former security service guard Mykola Melnychenko, was not authentic.

The now famous tape, which is just over 20 minutes in lengeth, and which Moroz presented to the public in late November, contain what he alleges to be Kuchma ordering top aides to kidnap Gongadze.

Nonson
1.14.01