It is "unjust" to call the Stalin-era famine...

Yanukovych"s statement to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) marks a complete reversal of the policy of his predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, who sought international recognition of the 1932-1933 Great Famine, known to Ukrainians as the Holodomor, as genocide.

PACE will discuss on Wednesday a report commemorating the victims of the Soviet famine that includes an amendment recognizing the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.

"We consider it incorrect and unjust to consider the Holodomor a fact of genocide of a certain people," Yanukovych said, calling it "a common tragedy" of the Soviet people.

The Ukrainian president said not only Ukrainian, but also Russian, Belarusian and Kazakh people starved during the famine.

"Those were consequences of Stalin"s totalitarian regime, his attitude to people," he said.

More than 3 million people perished in Ukraine due to the famine, and Ukrainian nationalists say Russia, as

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