KIEV, Ukraine – Ukraine’s Supreme Court yesterday eased the way for Western-leaning reformer Viktor Yushchenko to be inaugurated as president, ruling that election results can be published before it finishes hearing the losing candidate’s appeal.

Publication in official newspapers of the results that showed Mr. Yushchenko winning the December 26 election by about 8 percentage points would give the Parliament the right to set an inauguration date – which Mr. Yushchenko aides said could be as soon as Friday.

Once the results are published, the Supreme Court would not have legal basis for rescinding them, lawyers said.

Representatives of Viktor Yanukovich, who filed the appeal, denounced the decision as biased and warned it would undermine Ukraine’s stability and aggravate political tensions. The court, responding to a motion by Mr. Yushchenko’s camp, lifted the publication ban starting today.

The timing leaves open the possibility that the court today could rule in favor of Mr. Yanukovich’s call to annul the results before the results are published. But Mr. Yushchenko’s camp appeared confident.

“This means the inauguration will happen,” one of Mr. Yushchenko’s representatives at the court, Mykola Katerinchuk, said after the decision.

Mr. Yanukovich’s side, too, appeared to regard the inauguration as inevitable. Mr. Yushchenko will be “an illegitimate president. Yushchenko’s staff is interested only in crowning him and inaugurating him,” said Mr. Yanukovich’s representative, Nestor Shufrich.