Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing president of Ukraine, on Monday proposed a new presidential election, potentially ending a bitter stand-off that threatened to split the largest country in eastern Europe.

”If we really want to preserve peace and consensus and build this just, democratic society of which we speak so much but have failed to carry out in a legal way, let us have new elections,” Kuchma was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. “This is the only more or less legal way to proceed,” he said.