Ukraine opposition cancels talks
 |  An opposition supporter forces his way into the parliament building in Kiev on Tuesday. |
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 Candidates in Ukraine's disputed presidential vote meet face-to-face.
 A strong organization supports the thousands demonstrating in the streets of Kiev.
 How Russia's President Putin and the EU see the crisis.
 The U.S. has a significant stake in what is happening in Ukraine.
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KIEV, Ukraine (CNN) -- Opposition officials say they have cut off negotiations with Ukraine's government aimed at settling the country's bitter and divisive presidential election dispute.
The behind-the-scenes talks had been progressing alongside parliamentary debates and the Supreme Court's consideration of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's charges that voting irregularities cost him victory in his contest with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.
The crisis has brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to Kiev, where Yushchenko supporters have blocked government buildings for several days.
Opposition leaders said Tuesday they would not end those demonstrations until its demands are met.
The demands are:
The government must admit that the election results were falsified.Yanukovych's government and the Central Election Commission must step down.Some action must be taken against three regional governors who threatened to take steps toward autonomy in the wake of the dispute.Interior Minister Nikolai Bilokon, who they believe was part of the effort to manipulate the election, must be fired."The authorities ... used the talks to cheat," Reuters quoted opposition leader Taras Stetskyv as telling thousands of Yushchenko supporters in central Kiev.
"That is why the ... (opposition) has decided to pull out of the talks. We are stopping talks with the authorities. We will talk with them only from the position of people power."
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski, who were involved in negotiations in Ukraine last week, were due to head back to Kiev for more talks on the crisis.
They were expected to be joined Wednesday by Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus and Russian envoy Boris Gryzlov, both of whom also took part in last week's talks, The Associated Press said.
It was not clear what effect the opposition's decision would have on the envoys' plans.
U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking to reporters in Canada Tuesday, said he has encouraged Kwasniewski to play a "constructive and useful role."
"Hopefully, this issue will be solved quickly and the will of the people will be known," Bush said.
"It's very important that violence not break out there. And it's important the will of the people be heard."
Earlier Tuesday, Ukraine's parliament convened an emergency session to consider a motion of no confidence in Yanukovych, but the motion failed to pass.
Legislators later gave tentative approval to a resolution canceling Saturday's nonbinding vote to declare the results invalid.
The votes prompted a minor incident in which a few protesters broke through a gate at the parliament building and tried to storm the session.
The incident was over quickly, and protesters -- some crawling on top of each other's shoulders -- only got as far as the lobby of the building before being pushed back by police, AP reported.
Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn adjourned the session until Wednesday and said Saturday's nonbinding decision would not be rescinded, AP said.
Yuschenko's supporters have been outside parliament and at Kiev's Independence Square for nine days, many sporting the campaign's orange ribbons and warming themselves around fires and singing folk songs.
Their tent camps that sprouted along Kiev's wide main street were covered in fresh snow.
Thousands more protesters backing each side gathered outside the Supreme Court, where the justices were considering Yushchenko's allegations of fraud and voter intimidation for a second day.
Outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, who backed Yanukovych, has said a new vote could be the only way to settle the dispute.
Yushchenko has rejected a proposal from Yanukovych that would make the opposition leader prime minister and change the constitution to transfer some of the president's powers to the prime minister, officials said.
The opposition wants to repeat the November 21 runoff -- under Ukrainian law, neither the Western-leaning Yushchenko nor the Moscow-backed Yanukovych would be eligible to run in a completely new election -- and for the vote to take place countrywide and not just in the two eastern regions where widespread fraud was alleged.
Among the allegations of fraud: Truckloads of people drove from town to town, voting by absentee ballot in each town they visited; and in at least one area, Yushchenko supporters were given ballots and pens that wrote with ink that disappeared after a few minutes.
A repeat runoff, the opposition says, could take place as soon as December 12 or December 19.
With Western observers saying the election did not meet acceptable standards of fairness, the United States and Europe have refused to recognize the results.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country still has much influence over the former Soviet republic, congratulated Yanukovych and complained of Western meddling.
Putin on Tuesday repeated his call for the Ukraine crisis to be resolved without international intervention.
Putin told German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that "an exit from the crisis should be found in a democratic way, that is, on the basis of observing the law and not under external or internal pressure based on political passions," the Kremlin press service said in a statement, AP reported.
Schroeder and Putin, who spoke by telephone, also discussed the possibility of fresh elections and agreed to respect the results of any such poll, the German leader's office said.
Yanukovych's supporters in Ukraine's industrialized, Russian-speaking regions in the east retaliated against efforts to repeat the election by considering autonomy, sparking fears that the east European nation of 48 million people could split.
But the regional governments later backed away from their initial plan to hold a non-binding referendum on autonomy on December 5, saying they would hold the referendum later.
Kuchma, who has repeatedly warned both sides to avoid bloodshed, has been meeting with the regional governors and said the continued crisis threatened Ukraine's economic stability.
"If we really want to build a rule of law and democratic society, which we have been speaking about so much, let us hold a new election," the president told a group of regional leaders meeting Monday outside the capital Kiev, the Russian press agency ITAR-Tass reported.
Yanukovych has said he would accept a new vote if allegations of fraud were proven, but he also wants new candidates, meaning he and Yushchenko would not run again in a new poll.
"That is stupidity. They're trying to prolong the agony," said Yushchenko's press secretary. "The name 'Yushchenko' and the word democracy are synonymous for many people in the Ukraine."
The Supreme Court could take several days to declare its ruling on the hundreds of serious complaints lodged by Yushchenko. CNN's Jill Dougherty said the Supreme Court was under political pressure but its rulings have often been at odds with the authorities.
CNN's Jill Dougherty, Max Tkachenko and Ryan Chilcote contributed to this report.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
