Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has announced that the reserve fund of the national budget has no financing for the organization and conduct of the early parliamentary elections.

She announced this at a press conference.

The prime minister added that the reserve fund has only funds for clean-up operations in the six flooded regions.

"The reserve fund has no spare money, it contains funds for overcoming consequences of the natural disaster," Tymoshenko said.

The prime minister added that it would be an irresponsible move to spend these funds on snap elections.

"To give this money away for financing elections would be just irresponsible," she emphasized.

Tymoshenko also said that allocation of financing for the early parliamentary elections from the reserve fund is an illegal move.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Cabinet of Ministers refused to allocate money from the reserve fund of the 2008 state budget for financing the early parliamentary elections.

The Central Election Commission estimates the cost of snap elections at UAH 417.5 million.

The regions of Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Ternopil, Zakarpattia, Chernivtsi and Vinnytsia were flooded on July 23-28.

On July 31, the Verkhovna Rada endorsed amendments to the 2008 national budget to earmark a UAH 2.32 billion subvention for the flooded regions and send an additional UAH 1.6 billion to the reserve fund and UAH 1 billion to the Agrarian Fund.