KIEV -- Ukrainian deputies narrowly approved Leonid Kuchma's choice for prime minister, close aide Viktor Yanukovich who is seen as a possible successor who could shield the scandal-ridden president from prosecution.

Yanukovich, 52, received 234 votes in the 450-seat single-chamber of Parliament where pro-Kuchma groups have a majority. Three deputies abstained and there were no votes against.

The four main opposition groups -- the Communist and Socialist parties, the Our Ukraine Faction and the Yulia Timoshenko Bloc -- boycotted the vote.

Kuchma, who signed a decree making the appointment official, is due to step down in 2004, but analysts have speculated that he could resign earlier once he has set a favored candidate in place to guarantee him immunity from prosecution.

Two scandals have plagued Kuchma's presidency, the killing of an opposition journalist and the alleged illegal sale of arms to Iraq.

Governor of the heavily industrialized Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine since 1997, Yanukovich was nominated by Kuchma last week after the dismissal of Anatoly Kinakh.

His confirmation prepares what some analysts are calling the "Russian option," a reference to Russian president Boris Yeltsin's appointment of a hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, as prime minister before resigning on December 31, 1999, three months before the expiry of his mandate.

One of Putin's first acts as new president was signing a decree declaring Yeltsin immune from prosecution.

Kuchma has been accused of ordering the murder of an opposition journalist, Georgy Gongadze, found dead in a forest outside Kiev in November 2000.

He is also accused by the United States of approving the sale to Iraq of a sophisticated radar system in violation of a UN arms embargo.

Yanukovich, who as Donetsk governor has establised a reputation for authoritarian rule, will now be required to present Kuchma with a list of ministerial appointments.

These are likely to be shared out among the nine groups who form the pro-presidential majority. He told deputies before the vote that his priority would be "to fight poverty and unemployment, reduce taxation and increase pensions." Other priorities for the new government were to "maintain growth while developing small and medium-sized businesses" and "attract foreign investment."

He added that he would cooperate will all groups represented in Parliament.

A spokesman for the Timoshenko bloc said however that it would oppose the new government.

"We opposed the Kuchma regime, and he (Yanukovich) has come to serve this regime," Anatoly Matvyenko said.

"The positive thing is that Yanukovich's appointment will speed up the government crisis," he added. Kuchma dismissed the Kinakh administration, formed in May last year, because of its "failure to resolve social problems." Despite a recent pickup in the economy, analysts had criticized Kinakh for failing to carry out the necessary reforms despite Kuchma's acknowledgement that he had succeeded "in maintaining economic growth." There was no official Russian reaction, but Moscow's popular Strana.ru Internet news site welcomed Yanukovich's appointment earlier, describing him as a politician "respected by Russian-speakers in the east of the country, the Ukrainian diaspora in Russia, and the Russian and Western political elites."

A former mechanic, Yanukovich was a soviet-era civil servant who held numerous senior managerial positions in Donetsk, a region dominated by ethnic Russians. An analyst with the political studies centre in Kiev, Tetyana Sytnik, described him as a "lead in the Soviet tradition who likes to control everything in person.