KIEV: Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich backed a call for talks with the opposition on Monday to end weeks of protests in Kiev, but tension was high with pro-Europe demonstrators barricading their protest camp in preparation for police intervention.

As riot police took up new positions in the capital, heavyweight boxing champion-turned-opposition politician Vitaly Klitschko called on the protesters to stand their ground, and warned Yanukovich that he would have blood on his hands if security forces tried to end the stand off violently.

Klitschko later tweeted that some protest barricades were being taken down by police in a southern part of the city. Across town, police dismantled protest tents to free the main road near the government head quarters and herded protesters back.

But no clashes were reported. Reuters correspondents at the scene said there were no attempts by police to move against the large encampment of protesters on Kiev’s Independence Square, focal point of the demonstration.

Masked men with guns raided the party headquarters of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko and took a computer server, said a spokeswoman who blamed the authorities.

With pressure growing on a shaky economy, the presidential website said Yanukovich supported a proposal for round-table talks involving the authorities and the opposition as a possible “platform for mutual understanding,” the website said.

No date was given for when the reconciliation talks could be held. Nor was it clear what the united opposition’s reaction to Yanukovich’s proposal would be.

But it was the first real sign by Yanukovich — whose switch in trade policy away from the European Union toward Russia on Nov. 21 provoked the unrest — that he might be ready to listen to opposition demands for the resignation of his government and early elections.