Defeated US presidentital candidate John Kerry has announced he will lead a team of mediators to Ukraine to advise opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko on how to concede defeat.

Senator Kerry will take former vice-president Al Gore, former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle and former California governor Gray Davis to Kiev in a bid to end the political stand-off developing in the country after Mr Yushchenko refused to take the Government’s word for it that he had lost.

Speaking to reporters in Boston before he boarded his private jet, Senator Kerry said the pro-Western opposition leader needed to learn the proper etiquette of Western electioneering.

“He’s hanging on and that is to be commended in some fields of endeavour - even in some parties. But it’s not how things are done in left-leaning parties anymore,” he said.

“He told his supporters that every vote would be counted, but he has to accept that they all have been. And in many cases, they’ve been counted twice.

“We’ll be going over there to tell him the value of a quick, and dignified, capitulation.”

Mr Davis will explain to key party figures that it is impossible to contest a successful campaign against such a charismatic figure as Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, a former regional governor jailed twice in his youth.

Mr Gore is expected to tell Yushchenko supporters to abandon planned court proceedings challenging the legality of the result and highlighting alleged vote-rigging in many areas of eastern Ukraine.

He urged the opposition to take a long-term view of the election result.

“Four years isn’t so long to wait for another go. Or eight years. Or twelve,” he said.

“And people talk about dynasties like they’re always bad. But often in Western democracies, what you find is that former governors who have been groomed for power and who win tight, contested elections go on to be great unifiers.”

It is believed Mr Daschle simply had nowhere else to be right now.

It is understood Mr Yushchenko’s party has already been adopting some of the tactics employed by Senator Kerry’s campaign team from the US presidential race.

Some of the country’s most popular entertainment figures have appeared at the main rally being held in central Kiev, in an echo of the strong Hollywood endorsement that Senator Kerry received in a bid to secure celebrity-obsessed states such as Ohio and New Mexico.

US President George W Bush issued a brief statement backing the mission, saying “these are some folks who know a thing or two about losin’”.