Ukraine participates in NATO's Prague summit and agrees to new action plan (12/01/02)

Ukraine participates in NATO's Prague summit and agrees to new action plan

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - After much speculation and doubt, Ukraine took part in the NATO summit in Prague on November 21-22 - albeit in a revamped and downgraded format. Ukraine agreed to a new action plan that will intensify relations between Kyiv and Brussels, and set in motion a process for eventual membership in the 26-member North Atlantic Alliance.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Anatolii Zlenko - not President Leonid Kuchma - took part in the Ukraine-NATO Council meeting held on the second day of the two-day affair. The Ukrainian foreign minister signed documents that give Ukraine reason to believe it can eventually become a NATO member-state if it continues to follow a path of economic, military and administrative reform, including a specific objectives plan for 2003.

Mr. Zlenko said after the meeting that he left the gathering more optimistic than he had expected to be.

"We have adopted what are new basic documents opening a new strategy of Ukraine-NATO relations. With these documents in mind, Ukraine can now begin practical preparations for NATO membership," explained Mr. Zlenko, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

NATO Deputy Secretary General Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, who co-chaired the meeting, said that a path had been cleared for more intensive consultations and cooperation with Ukraine. He added, however, that while NATO is willing to share its experience, Ukraine must step up reforms aimed at strengthening the rule of law, respect for human rights, market economy principles and the development of civil society.

Ukraine had withheld a decision on whether it would attend the event, where seven former Iron Curtain states became NATO members, until only days before its start. Kyiv had objected to a decision downgrading the meeting to a gathering of foreign ministers from what was originally to have been a NATO-Ukraine summit of state leaders. NATO made the decision to downgrade the session after Kyiv failed to convince Washington it had not transferred Kolchuha anti-aircraft defense systems to Iraq in contravention of United Nations sanctions.

The decision came after Washington suspended direct U.S. government aid to Ukraine on September 25 when it announced that it had verified the authenticity of digital recordings it had obtained. On those recordings Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma is heard to give approval for his top arms export control chief to sell at least one Kolchuha to Iraq via a Jordanian intermediary.

Mr. Kuchma, who had warned just days before the summit that if he didn't go no representative from Ukraine would attend the NATO summit, in the end appeared in Prague at the 44-member Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which consists of the NATO member-states plus those countries that are associated with the NATO Partnership for Peace program.

To avoid a possibly embarrassing situation, in which President Kuchma and U.S. President George W. Bush might have sat next to each other at the session - which could have given the appearance that the two were friends even as the U.S. has declared it is officially not on speaking terms with Ukraine's presidential administration - the meeting was conducted in French, NATO's second official language. While an English-language alphabetical seating arrangement would have put the United States next to Ukraine, in accordance with the French language (whereby the United States is known as États-Unis the seating arrangement gave them half a table of breathing space.

In a short statement during the session, President Kuchma congratulated the seven new NATO members, while reminding them that Ukraine played a role in their development by sustaining independence and striving for European integration, which helped to maintain security in Europe. He also reiterated Ukraine's desire to follow the seven former Iron Curtain nations into NATO.

"We understand that the road to our own Prague is a long one," said Mr. Kuchma. "But we are resolutely disposed to follow it."

While no meetings occurred between Presidents Kuchma and Bush, the Ukrainian president was not isolated or ostracized in Prague as some had suggested he might be. Threats of empty seats at the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council session did not materialize upon the appearance of the Ukrainian president. Mr. Kuchma even had a private meeting with Italian President Silvio Berlusconi, whose country is squarely situated in the West as a member of both the Group of Seven most industrialized nations and the European Union.

Mr. Kuchma also had short meetings with NATO Secretary General George Robertson and European Union Foreign Affairs Minister Javier Solana, according to the Ukrainian government newspaper, Uriadovyi Kurier.

Mr. Robertson, however, said later that the meeting with President Kuchma happened by chance and involved only formal greetings.

"I did not support his participation in the Prague summit," explained Mr. Robertson.

Ukraine, although not the center of attention in Prague, because that belonged to NATO's seven new members - Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - was also nowhere near the periphery. In fact, a separate article in the summit's main declaration, approved on the first day of the Prague deliberations, recognized Ukraine's importance and NATO's desire for close cooperation with the country.

The Kolchuha issue hung like a cloud over Ukraine during the two-day session, nonetheless. NATO General Secretary Robertson, who dedicated his first post-summit press conference to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists on November 26, said that NATO would continue to press Kyiv to settle unresolved issues regarding the alleged transfer of Kolchuhas to Iraq. He declared that the issue would not be allowed to go away.

The Kolchuha report

On November 26, Kolchuhas continued to play on center stage of Ukrainian relations with West when U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual and his British colleague, Ambassador Robert Brinkley, made public the official report developed by the joint U.S.-British expert team as a result of an investigation they conducted in Ukraine on October 13-20 on illegal arms transfers to Iraq.

The 16-page report asserts that while 72 of 76 Kolchuhas manufactured in Ukraine since 1987 had been tracked and accounted for, the sale of the final four to China raised questions that Kyiv officials had yet to answer satisfactorily.

Mr. Pascual said the unresolved issues revolved around the sales contract, a standardized international form, which Ukraine maintains China changed before the parties signed it.

According to the U.S. ambassador, U.S. and British experts had asked to see a missing clause of the contract, which demands that the purchaser identify to the seller all possible third parties involved in the transaction. While Ukrainian officials of the arms export control agency, Ukrspetseksport, initially explained that it had simply been moved to another location, they were not forthcoming in providing clear evidence that it was contained in the contract.

After some debate and insistence from the U.S. side that it see the original sales document, Ukraine came back several days later, not with the contract, but with a blank piece of paper on which the clause was printed, according to Ambassador Pascal's version of events.

Responding to assertions that perhaps the United States or Britain needed to prove guilt and that Ukraine had the right to maintain its innocence until they produced conclusive evidence of the sale of a Kolchuha, Ambassador Brinkley reminded reporters that it was the Ukrainian side that had guaranteed there would be unfettered access to confidential and top secret documents.

"President Kuchma invited British and U.S. experts to Ukraine to look into the sale of Kolchuhas," explained Mr. Brinkley. "It was he who guaranteed us there would be full access and transparency."

Ambassador Pascual also rejected insinuations made by President Kuchma's chief of staff, Viktor Medvedchuk, that the U.S. was manipulating Ukraine as a puppet to spy on China and determine the location of the four Kolchuhas, which have the ability to track aircraft without being detected by pilots. The United States and Britain fear for the safety of their pilots patrolling no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq should Baghdad have access to such a detection system.

The U.S. ambassador said his country had not addressed China on the issue, but had turned over information on Kolchuha sales to Beijing, as well as information on other sales to Russia, to the United Nations 661 Committee, which tracks the sales of arms and military supplies to Iraq.

On November 26 China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied any involvement in the transfer of Ukrainian Kolchuha missile defense systems to Iraq, reported Interfax-Ukraine. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that its government strictly abides by U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

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