Signing of a controversial deal to supply Russian gas to Ukraine has been postponed to allow officials in Kiev to complete work on documents, officials said on Saturday. A government spokesman told Reuters that signing of the agreement, providing for gas prices nearly to double, would now take place next Wednesday. Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov confirmed the new date. "Unfortunately, we were unable to get the documents ready," Interfax Ukraine news agency quoted him as saying. The deal, clinched in the heat of a parliamentary election campaign, was denounced as a betrayal of national interests by President Viktor Yushchenko's rivals. Industrialists were also critical, saying it would inflict heavy losses on many plants. Parliament sacked the government, plunging Ukraine into constitutional deadlock. Yushchenko says his government will remain in place pending the March 26 election to an assembly with expanded powers. The accord, clinched on Jan. 4, ended a row between Moscow and Kiev which culminated in Russian gas giant Gazprom briefly switching off supplies to Ukraine in the New Year. That also halted 80 percent of deliveries to Europe, which gets around a quarter of its gas from Russia. In Moscow, Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told Ekho Moskvy radio station: "The Ukrainians decided that the documents needed a bit more work." He also said Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Minister Ivan Plachkov would travel to Moscow on Sunday to hold talks with Saparmurat Niyazov, the president of the ex-Soviet central Asian state of Turkmenistan -- Ukraine's second main gas supplier. That meeting, Kupriyanov told Ekho Moskvy, "will in no way affect the agreements we have concluded with Ukraine".
