NEWSBRIEFS (01/25/98)

NEWSBRIEFS

Kadenyuk receives award for space flight

KYIV - President Leonid Kuchma greeted the first Ukrainian cosmonaut in space, Leonid Kadenyuk, with the successful completion of his flight on the American shuttle. Mr. Kuchma presented Col. Kadenyuk with a first-degree order for his significant contribution in improving the prestige of Ukraine's space sector and personal courage. (Eastern Economist)

Ukrainian court to rule on death penalty

KYIV - Chief Justice Ivan Tymchenko has said the Constitutional Court will rule whether capital punishment is constitutional, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on January 14. Justice Tymchenko did not say when the ruling would be made. The Council of Europe has threatened to suspend Ukraine if it continues to carry out the death penalty. Kyiv pledged to stop executions when it joined the council in 1995. The following year, however, well over 100 executions took place in Ukraine. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Leftist bloc to focus on social issues

KYIV - Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksander Moroz said in Kyiv on January 19 that his leftist bloc will base its election campaign on alleviating wage arrears and other social problems, Reuters reported. Parliamentary elections are to be held on March 29. Mr. Moroz's Socialist Party is grouped with the Communist and Agrarian parties in Parliament, which have routinely resisted reform legislation. "The fate of collective farming is at stake," he said, pledging to fight government plans to allow the lease and sale of land. Mr. Moroz's bloc controls 170 of the 450 seats in Parliament. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Charges filed against Lazarenko

KYIV - Criminal charges have been filed against former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko for illegally opening currency accounts with Swiss banks. A statement issued on January 15 by the Procurator General's Office noted that official documents received from the Swiss federal police form the basis of the case against Mr. Lazarenko, leader of the Hromada Party. Mr. Lazarenko called the filing of criminal charges "an attempt by the current government to discredit Hromada and their leader on the eve of elections." Mr. Lazarenko stated on January 19 that he has no foreign currency accounts in any foreign bank. He called the fact that he had learned about the filing of charges against him not from the Procurator General's Office but from the mass media "judicial nihilism." His statement added that "anti-people forces" would not stop before they started a "civil war with numerous victims." Mr. Lazarenko noted the absence of any reaction from President Leonid Kuchma, saying actions against him were centered on destroying effective political opposition. Mr. Lazarenko ended his statement by asserting that "everything will become clearer after parliamentary elections in March." (Eastern Economist)

President approves 1998 budget

KYIV - President Leonid Kuchma has signed the 1998 budget. Passed by the Verkhovna Rada three weeks ago, the budget calls for revenues of 21.1 billion hrv ($11.1 billion U.S.) and expenditures of 24.5 billion hrv, resulting in a projected deficit of 3.3 percent of the gross domestic product. Viktor Yuschenko, chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, said last week that the deficit should be kept at 2 percent of the GDP to maintain economic stability and help attract foreign investment. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Kuchma and Yeltsin slate meeting

KYIV - A working meeting between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine will take place on January 30-31 in President Boris Yeltsin's country residence near Moscow. Agreement was reached in a telephone conversation between the two presidents on January 19. A number of bilateral issues are likely to be discussed at the meeting prior to President Leonid Kuchma's official visit to Moscow at the end of February. (Eastern Economist)

Ukraine and U.K. sign cooperation treaty

KYIV - The law enforcement agencies of Ukraine and Great Britain signed an inter-departmental agreement on mutual understanding on January 16. First Vice Minister for Internal Affairs Gen. Leonid Borodych said after the ceremony that this document will "enable cooperation to be put into practice and become a catalyst for development of bilateral cooperation." First Vice Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Gen. Anatolii Beliayev said "the signed document is the result of collaboration between the two countries." (Eastern Economist)

Programs outlined to stabilize economy

KYIV - Prime Minister Valerii Pustovoitenko said in Kyiv on January 19 that the government has outlined programs to stabilize the economy in 1998, DPA reported. Mr. Pustovoitenko said that although the GDP sank 1.8 percent in 1997, it will increase by about 0.5 percent this year. He also said that unpaid salary debts were reduced by one-third and now total some $470 million. This contradicts end-of-the-year figures released by the National Bank of Ukraine showing that some $2.6 billion is still owed to workers. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Cabinet rejects demand for dismissals

KYIV - The Cabinet of Ministers has rejected a demand by the Verkhovna Rada to sack Prime Minister Valerii Pustovoitenko and two other senior officials, DPA reported on January 17. By a margin of one vote, the Parliament on January 16 passed a non-binding resolution that called on President Leonid Kuchma to fire Mr. Pustovoitenko, Culture and Arts Minister Dmytro Ostapenko, and Kyiv Mayor Oleksander Omelchenko for allegedly embezzling $40 million during the renovation of Kyiv's main concert/conference hall, the Palats Ukraina, which was completed in 1996. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Minister says USSR did not occupy Baltics

TALLINN - According to the Estonian daily Postimees, Russia's vice minister for foreign affairs, Aleksandr Avdeev, has sent an official note to the Russian State Duma arguing that the Soviet Union did not forcefully annex the Baltic states, BNS and ETA reported on January 19. Mr. Avdeev's January 8 note was reportedly in response to Duma Vice-Chairman Sergei Baburin's question about whether Russian Ambassador to Estonia Aleksi Glukhov had admitted the 1940 Soviet occupation of the Baltics in an interview with an Estonian magazine. Mr. Avdeev denied that Mr. Glukhov had made such an admission, stressing that the ministry's official viewpoint is that Soviet troops were stationed in the Baltics in keeping with international accords and with the agreement of the three countries' leaderships. The Postimees report also claims that Moscow argues that "threatening to use force" was banned only after the United Nations statutes were adopted. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Orthodox, Catholic officials slate mission

KYIV - Following closed-door meetings in Moscow, Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic officials have agreed to send a delegation to Ukraine in an effort to resolve a dispute between the Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches, ITAR-TASS and DPA reported on January 15. The Russian Orthodox Church claims the Greek-Catholic Church has taken over Orthodox churches in western Ukraine. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Crimeans protest Ukraine-Russia treaty

SEVASTOPOL - A few hundred pro-Moscow protesters in the Crimean seaport of Sevastopol urged the Russian State Duma not to ratify the political accord between Moscow and Kyiv recently ratified by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Among other things, the treaty consolidates Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea. The demonstrators claimed that Kyiv officials are "Ukrainianizing" the mostly Russian peninsula. They called for a referendum to help decide Crimea's status. (RFE/RL Newsline)

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