US President George W. Bush said Thursday that there should be no foreign influence in future Ukrainian presidential elections.

"I think any election -- if there is one -- ought to be free from any foreign influence," Bush said in a joint briefing with visiting Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo at the White House.

Ukraine's outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, who supported the pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, proposed holding an entirely new presidential election, not just a re-run of the disputed second round.

Though declared winner of the Nov. 21 vote, Yanukovich cannot be inaugurated until the Supreme Court rules on an opposition demand that the election result be invalidated.

Both the opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko and the West dismissed last month's vote as fraudulent while Russia accused Western countries of inflaming tension in the former Soviet republic.