President Kravchuk visits Israel

Kyyiv demonstrators seek Demjanjuk's release

KYYIV - President Leonid Kravchuk concluded his three-day visit to Israel on January 13 by signing a memorandum on mutual understanding and principles of bilateral cooperation, reported Radio Liberty.

Speaking at a banquet held in his honor by Israel's president, Chaim Herzog, Mr. Kravchuk stated that "through joint efforts... a new chapter is being opened in the history of relations between the Ukrainian and Jewish people."

In a speech before the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, President Kravchuk underlined that Ukraine seeks to cultivate cordial relations with Israel, while reiterating that it wants to pursue a balanced Mideast policy and supports the Middle East peace process. Just a few weeks earlier, President Kravchuk had visited Egypt, where he met with President Hosni Mubarak.

During his visit to Israel, President Kravchuk also signed agreements on Ukrainian-Israeli cooperation in the fields of business, science and culture.

The Ukrainian president was accompanied on his visit by Foreign Minister Anatoliy Zlenko and six other Cabinet ministers.

He met with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who said after lunching with Mr. Kravchuk, "We consider it a very important visit because he is president of a very important country." Meetings were also held with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

President Kravchuk is the first president of a member-nation of the Commonwealth of Independent States to visit Israel. His delegation visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and attended the dedication of the Ukrainian Embassy in Tel Aviv.

A member of the president's delegation, Viktor Nahaychuk, head of the Foreign Ministry's Middle East Section, noted "We are doing everything to put an end to the myth that Ukrainians are anti-Semites." Reuters quoted him as saying: "The history of Ukrainian-Jewish relations has its ups and downs, but for many years only the downs have been stressed. We believe there is more to unite us than to divide us."

During the Kravchuk delegation's visit, Foreign Minister Peres noted President Kravchuk's speech more than two years ago at the Babyn Yar Memorial on the outskirts of Kyyiv. He described Mr. Kravchuk's address as "very anti-anti-Semitic."

The Demjanjuk case

On January 9, before President Kravchuk's departure for Israel, a group of demonstrators in Kyyiv called on the president to speak out in defense of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian American now awaiting the outcome of his final appeal to Israel's Supreme Court. Mr. Demjanjuk, who was born in Ukraine, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1986 for the Nazi war crimes committed by the notorious guard at the Treblinka death camp known as "Ivan the Terrible."

While President Kravchuk was in Israel, demonstrators gathered near the Israeli Mission in Kyyiv to urge Mr. Demjanjuk's release.

Radio Liberty reported that Dmytro Pavlychko, chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, was quoted on January 12 as saying that Mr. Demjanjuk was framed by the KGB and it is time for Israel to release him.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 17, 1993, No. 3, Vol. LXI

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