Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly seats Ukraine's delegation (02/01/98)

Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly seats Ukraine's delegation

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on January 27 rescinded its threat to bar the seating of the Ukrainian delegation - for now.

The Parliamentary Assembly has repeatedly criticized Ukraine for failing to fulfill a promise given when the country accepted membership in the Council of Europe to establish a moratorium on the death penalty and to eventually ban it. All the countries of Europe have either banned capital punishment or have instituted moratoriums.

During several visits to Ukraine, the PACE delegation has found that death sentences continue to be carried out even as Ukraine has denied that capital punishment continues. Ukraine had been warned several times that if it does not come into compliance with Council of Europe membership requirements it would be banned or even thrown out of that body.

Although the last PACE delegation, which visited Ukraine in November 1997, acknowledged that President Leonid Kuchma had de facto implemented a moratorium since March 1997 by giving clemency to each individual whose time was up, it still maintained pressure on Ukraine to issue a formal decree either by the president or the Verkhovna Rada. Neither the executive nor the legislative side is willing to do so at a time that more than 60 percent of Ukrainians favor capital punishment

At the opening of the January session of the PACE on January 26 it looked as if the Council of Europe finally would act on its threats to ban Ukraine.

A proposal from the floor called for rejection of the mandates of the Ukrainian delegation, which included Ukraine's Minister of Justice Suzanna Stanik, according to Holos Ukrainy. Among other items, the proposal identified an alleged threat from acting Procurator General Oleh Lytvak that if Ukraine were not allowed to participate in the current session of the Parliamentary Assembly the future of the 200 individuals who still remain on death row in Ukraine would be bleak.

The comment was supposed to have been made while Mr. Lytvak spoke before a plenary session of Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada. (In an unrelated development, Mr. Lytvak resigned his post on January 23.)

After a two-hour break during which the Ukrainian delegation to the PACE, led by National Deputy Borys Oliinyk, obtained documents from Kyiv proving that no such comment was ever rendered, the procedural committee of the PACE met to decide on whether to recommend the seating of the Ukrainian delegation.

Near midnight the procedural committee, led by PACE President Leni Fischer, voted to approve the mandates.

In order for Ukraine to fall into line with PACE requirements, Ukraine must overcome a general feeling among its citizens that the death penalty in Ukraine is needed at a time when crime has drastically increased and the economic situation has made it more difficult to maintain prisons and prison populations.

Verkhovna Rada National Deputy Volodymyr Yavorivskyi, a member of Ukraine's PACE delegation, explained to the assembly on the second day of the session that the period before elections to Ukraine's Parliament is not the right time to pressure Ukraine's democrats to move forcefully to rescind the death penalty. He said such a move by democratic forces would push more of Ukraine's citizens' into the Communist camp, and in the end Ukraine's face would again be turned away from Europe.

Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe seemed to understand and voted to seat the Ukrainian parliamentarians. But the respite is a temporary one. By the next session of the PACE, scheduled for April, the deliberative body expects the new Verkhovna Rada that will be seated after the March 29 elections to approve a moratorium on state executions. Otherwise, Ukraine would again face exclusion.

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