Talbott calls for continuing support of Ukraine despite leftward shift (04/19/98)

Talbott calls for continuing support of Ukraine despite leftward shift

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott has called on the major industrial democracies - including the United States - to continue their support of Ukraine despite recent election results showing a leftward shift in the Verkhovna Rada and the slowing economic reforms.

"For the United States, that means maintaining an array of programs that have made Ukraine the fourth largest recipient of American assistance in the world - and the No. 1 recipient in the former Soviet Union," he wrote in an infrequent (for Mr. Talbott) newspaper article on a major policy issue, which appeared on April 14 in the Washington Post.

He pointed out that Ukraine's stability and security "matter profoundly to Europe and the United States."

"It is in its own interest for the United States to help Ukraine achieve its potential to be a secure, democratic, prosperous, self-confident state, fully integrated into the Euro-Atlantic Community. But Ukraine's leaders must do more to help us help them," he added.

The article appeared two weeks after Ukraine's Communist Party won the largest bloc in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada and a little more than two weeks before Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright must decide whether to certify before Congress that Ukraine has made "significant progress" in resolving disputes with some American investors. If not, according to a stipulation Congress added to the current foreign aid bill, the administration will be forced to stop, with some exceptions, the remainder of U.S. assistance for Ukraine - close to half of the $225 million total it would have received.

Mr. Talbott wrote that the United States, a long-standing supporter of political and economic reforms in Ukraine, "views the election results with concern." He added, however, that while the Communists' stated goals are to reverse parts of the privatization program and partially re-nationalize industry and banking, their ability "to turn back the clock is severely limited."

"Ukraine's need for international access to international investment capital and development assistance," he pointed out, "is likely to prove stronger than the siren song of a bankrupt ideology."

Mr. Talbott did not address the certification issue in the Washington Post article, as he did less than a week earlier in his remarks during a closed seminar here on Ukraine-NATO relations, when he said that the latest report he heard on efforts to resolve the remaining investment disputes "was not very encouraging."

Going public with a foreign policy issue - as Mr. Talbott did in the Washington Post with his call for continued support for Ukraine and his appeal to its government "to help us help them" - suggests that this issue has been placed very high on the Clinton administration's agenda and that it is eagerly awaiting some positive signs from Kyiv as well as more understanding on Capitol Hill.

Ukraine's vice minister of foreign affairs Anton Buteiko, who was part of the Ukrainian government group participating in the Ukraine-NATO seminar, said in an interview that Ukraine is doing everything possible to resolve these investment problems and that it understands the U.S. administration's predicament.

"But, I think that to reduce the relationship between Ukraine and the United States to the question of certification is completely superficial and inappropriate. I think this issue should be viewed in the context of the full spectrum of our relationship, and the importance of Ukraine and its role on the continent."

(Excerpts from Mr. Buteiko's interview will be published next week.)

In his article, Mr. Talbott wrote that Ukraine is not only a new state, but a fragile one, mainly because its economy "repels rather than attracts foreign investment and that [it] has so far failed to produce the kind of benefits that people in other post-Communist societies have begun to take for granted."

Similar scenarios, he noted, have helped Communists increase their influence in other countries of that region: Poland, Lithuania, Russia and Hungary.

Mr. Talbott pointed out that the critical question for Ukraine now is whether the Communists will work with President Leonid Kuchma "in the larger interest of the country to get economic reform moving again," or whether both branches will defer difficult decisions until after the 1999 presidential election.

Mr. Talbott would prefer the former. "Finger-pointing, demagoguery, empty promises and inaction on economic reform will make things that much worse in October 1999," he wrote.

While there is cause for concern, Mr. Talbott said there are also reasons for optimism. In its seven years of independence, Ukraine has made "some brave, forward-looking decisions" in the areas of non-proliferation, improving relations with its neighbors and in dealing with its ethnic diversity through peaceful, democratic means.

"That helps rebut the prophets of doom who, not long ago, predicted that it would be on the rocks of ethnic separatism that the Ukrainian ship would founder," he wrote.

"These examples of international good citizenship," Mr. Talbott noted, are the incentives for continued international support for Ukraine.