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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday it is considering all options, including sanctions, toward Ukraine, where riot police moved against demonstrators overnight after weeks of protests against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich. "All policy options, including sanctions, are on the table, in our view, but obviously that still is being evaluated," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters, declining to specify what kinds of sanctions may be under consideration. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Vicki Allen)

By Alissa de Carbonnel and Pavel Polityuk KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian protesters stood their ground on Wednesday after an overnight sweep by riot police and their leaders dismissed an offer of talks from a president they say must quit for favoring ties with Russia over the European Union. Pressed by Europe and the United States, which condemned the destruction of a protest camp in central Kiev, President Viktor Yanukovich offered to meet opposition leaders to find a way out of a crisis that blew up last month when he yielded to pressure from Moscow and spurned a free trade deal with the EU. The authorities had made their most forceful attempt so far to reclaim the streets, sending in battalions of riot police with bulldozers to clear Independence Square. Within hours, after meetings with U.S. and European Union officials who had urged him to compromise, Yanukovich asked his opponents to meet him to negotiate a way out of the impasse: "I invite representatives of all political parties, priests, representatives of civil society to national talks," he said in a statement that also called on the opposition not to "go down the road of confrontation and ultimatums".