Turning the pages back... March 13, 2005 (03/12/06)

Turning the pages back...

March 13, 2005

One year ago, our Washington correspondent, Yaro Bihun, reported on a briefing by Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on developments in Ukraine. At the briefing, Sen. Lugar discussed his long involvement in Ukrainian affairs, but focused primarily on the recent presidential election process, during which he was President George W. Bush's special representative to Ukraine.

Sen. Lugar arrived in Kyiv a few days before the second round with what he described as a "tactful but rather stern" letter to President Leonid Kuchma from President Bush about U.S. concerns over the gross violations evident in the first round. Noting that Washington was expecting that this would not be repeated in the second round, the letter indicated that, otherwise, there would be "substantial consequences" for the bilateral relationship.

He said that, as the polls closed, it was obvious that in their determination to guarantee a victory by Viktor Yanukovych in the second round, his supporters outdid themselves in the use of multiple voting. Sen. Lugar indicated that these results "could not have occurred without overt complicity of the government in the result."

Fortunately, he said, within a week the Verkhovna Rada and the Supreme Court of Ukraine weighed in and set the stage for the deciding third round.

Now that a new, democratically elected Yushchenko government is in power in Ukraine, he said, Congress and the administration are discussing "what do we do as a country."

It is important, he said, for the U.S. to pay attention to developments in Ukraine, which "offers an extraordinary opportunity in terms of the strength of the people, well-educated, lots of talent, badly in need of capital, very much in need of political support on all fronts."

"I am certain that we will give it," he underscored.

Source: "Sen. Lugar underscores that Ukraine deserves U.S. support," by Yaro Bihun, The Ukrainian Weekly, March 13, 2005, Vol. LXXIII, No. 11.

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