President Yushchenko is seeking to speed up parliament’s adoption of laws needed to join the World Trade Organization by submitting 16 bills himself and applying his constitutional prerogative to have them brought up out of turn, the president’s deputy chief, Arseny Yatsenyuk, said yesterday. Yatsenyuk said that if all Yushchenko’s bills were adopted quickly, Ukraine could join the WTO by the end of the year. Viktor Yanukovich’s government has been delaying introducing its versions of the bills, citing the need to accommodate domestic producers’ interests. Tom Warner: Yushchenko’s move will enliven the debate over WTO but it is unlikely to speed up accession, as the majority coalition will wait for directions from Yanukovich. Yanukovich’s position is likely to become clearer after this week’s visit by the Russian prime minister, Mikhail Fradkov.