U.S. election day is being overshadowed on world news sites by dramatic developments after Sunday's presidential election in Ukraine, which is still far from over, as fury erupted in the Ukrainian parliament after Viktor Yushchenko's opposition accused Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich of wholesale cheating on Tuesday.

Yanukovych cheats as Yushchenko takes ballot lead

KIEV, Ukraine, Nov 2 — U.S. election day is being overshadowed on world news sites by dramatic developments after Sunday's presidential election in Ukraine, which is still far from over, as fury erupted in the Ukrainian parliament after Viktor Yushchenko's opposition accused Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich of wholesale cheating on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Russian state news agency Itar-Tass reported on Tuesday: “an a nalysis of 95 percent of votes cast in Ukraine's presidential elections has shown that opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko has taken a 0.04 per cent lead over Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, said a source in Ukraine's Central Election Commission (CEC).”

With international observers also saying the race did not meet democratic standards, Ukraine 's opposition have now accused Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich and his allies in a parliamentary session Tuesday of wholesale cheating in the presidential election, foreshadowing a bitter run-off battle later this month. In a rowdy session of parliament on Tuesday, Yanukovich's allies raucously dismissed the criticism declaring they were confident their candidate would defeat liberal challenger Viktor Yushchenko in the November 21 run-off.

Officially, t he CEC, have so far counted only 94.4 percent of the electoral districts, giving Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych has 40.12 percent of the vote with opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko on 39.15 percent.

This morning however, the CEC stopped counting ballots for the day with 5.6 percent of the polling stations still to report prompting Oleksander Zinchenko, Mr. Yushchenko's campaign manager, to accuse the CEC of stopping its count for fear that the remaining Kiev ballots would put his candidate ahead.

Oleksander Zinchenko, Mr. Yushchenko's campaign manager, accused the CEC of stopping its count for fear that the remaining Kiev ballots would put his candidate ahead.

"It's understood how Kievites voted. And then the CEC would be forced today to say that Yushchenko won the election. That's why the CEC needed to take a pause, to figure out what to do now."

Opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, leads in the nationalist Ukrainian-speaking west of the country, and was heavily supported in the capital, Kiev , where most of the uncounted ballots were cast. Viktor Yanukovych leads in the industrial pro-Russian east of Ukraine.

All the signs of an unfair election process were on display in Ukraine with complaints of widespread vote fraud, as outgoing President Leonid Kuchma's ruling state authorities continue to use every trick in the book to help their candidate, Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych, to win.

The corrupt, authoritarian regime of President Kuchma, intervened flagrantly in favor of his protégé, Viktor Yanukovych. State-controlled media was blatantly biased against the reformist challenger, Viktor Yushchenko, and Russia 's President Vladimir Putin openly backed Yanukovych.

Irina Gerashenko, a spokeswoman for Mr Yushchenko, said because neither candidate won 50 percent of the vote there would be runoff on Nov. 21, despite the "government having stolen a significant number of votes in the first round".

She said Ukrainians did not expect honest elections from their government but that in the second round "there will be results of this falsification and a new government in Ukraine ".

Mr. Zinchenko, said the candidate would soon address his supporters with a "mobilization plan" so they did not have "to yield to any threats".

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