NATO postponed a long-scheduled meeting between alliance foreign ministers and their Ukrainian counterpart Wednesday amid the political turmoil in Ukraine.

"NATO thought the time was not right for the NATO-Ukraine Commission to meet at this level," said NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Brussels.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko had been due to hold routine talks with the NATO ministers at their year-end meeting at alliance headquarters in Brussels on Thursday.

The postponement came amid growing acrimony between the West and Russia over the situation in Ukraine. Russia has warned the West against interfering in the affairs of its neighbor Ukraine and in other former Soviet republics.

Also on Wednesday, the Ukrainian parliament adopted a new composition of the Central Election Commission (CEC) of 15 people following its dismissal of the body earlier in the day.

The legislature's vote to dismiss the old commission as part ofa compromise between outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and the opposition was aimed at defusing the weeks-long political crisis triggered by the Nov. 21 presidential vote.

A new central election commission was a key demand of the opposition headed by Viktor Yushchenko.

The CEC had declared Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych the winner of the Nov. 21 runoff election, but the results were later annulled by the Supreme Court as the opposition claims that the commission is involved in massive fraud of the campaign in favor of Yanukovych.

The opposition hopes that a new CEC will reduce ballot-rigging in the Dec. 26 rerun of the presidential runoff and increase Yushchenko's opportunities to win.

The parliament also passed a package of constitutional and electoral amendments earlier in the day to shift more presidentialpowers to parliament in another move to end the political impasse.

The parliament's approval broke a tense standoff between Kuchmaand the opposition and smoothed the way for a new presidential poll.

Opposition leader Yushchenko told tens of thousands of supporters on Wednesday that "after 17 days of peaceful protest, we have claimed victory."

He also called on his supporters to lift the blockades and return home and work to make sure the Dec. 26 vote was free of fraud.

Meanwhile, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, hailed the crucial decisions as a breakthrough.

"The decisions should pave the way for a free and fair re-run of elections in Ukraine on Dec. 26," he said in The Hague.

And US Secretary of State Collin Powell said in Brussels that "Ukrainians are coming together to find a Ukrainian solution to this problem and we all stand by to help."

But Prime Minister Yanukovych said "a coup is slowly taking place in the country today. Chaos reigns and decisions are only taken by force."

Source: Xinhua