In Ukraine's Supreme Council: Priorities are set for 1993 (12/27/92)

In Ukraine's Supreme Council

Priorities are set for 1993

by Marta Kolomayets
Kiev Press Bureau

KIEV - What will 1993 hold in store for Ukraine? According to some leading politicians in the Supreme Council, ratification of the START treaty will be a priority issue once the Parliament reconvenes in mid-January.

The Ukrainian government has given the U.S. State Department assurances that the Parliament will ratify the treaty as early as January 14, reported the Financial Times on Monday, December 21.

But, Dmytro Pavlychko, the chairman of the Parliament's Foreign Relations Committee told reporters recently that "the Ukrainian Parliament will have some serious input in the matter. We can neither refuse to ratify the treaty, nor ratify without adding our own protocol, without our own provisions, because they are also germane."

Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus have already ratified the treaty and Ukraine is considered the last important hurdle to full ratification of the accord, which provides for reductions in strategic nuclear weapons. Ukraine is the last of the four nuclear republics of the former Soviet Union. It has 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles on its territory; its tactical weapons have already been transferred to Russia.

Although Ukraine has pledged to become a non-nuclear state, Mr. Pavlychko has stressed that if "Ukraine is to destroy its nuclear arsenal, then we wish to see a written guarantee from the nuclear powers that they will not attack Ukraine and that, if it were attacked by anyone else, they would intervene."

Recently, Lawrence Eagleburger, the new U.S. secretary of state, warned Kiev that if ratification did not come soon, Ukraine's relations with Washington could be threatened. But President Leonid Kravchuk, reported the Financial Times, has said that although Ukraine supports the START treaty in principle, the pact is a serious agreement that Parliament should study thoroughly before ratification.

Mr. Kravchuk stressed that the U.S. Senate studied it for more than a year before approving it.

Although the Financial Times reported that top Ukrainian officials have been angered by the "heavy-handed attitude of the outgoing Bush team at the State Department," Mr. Pavlychko said he "believes the Clinton administration's approach will be no different because it is obviously interested in seeing the treaty ratified."

"There are political and economic aspects to this question. Ukraine should be economically compensated for its willingness to disarm. This quibbling over whether $150 million or $170 million will be offered is of lesser importance because, as far as I am concerned, this amount is entirely insufficient. In order to properly dispose of Ukraine's nuclear arsenal, we need a minimum of $2 billion. This will enable us to destroy it here, on Ukrainian territory and not elsewhere, as some parties would wish. We will not concede this point," Mr. Pavlychko concluded.

The constructive democratic opposition, as Rukh and New Ukraine have been designated, see the importance of START treaty ratification, but they view domestic issues as the priority once the new parliamentary session begins. "We have to pass new laws on elections, and an addendum to the Constitution concerning the structure of the future Parliament. I think that without a change in the government forces - on the raion, city, oblast and republican levels, we won't get anywhere," said the chairman of Rukh.

"Rukh has developed a draft law on elections as part of our nation-building program, and it has already been submitted to the presidium of the Parliament. We thought we had an ally in Supreme Council Chairman Ivan Pliushch, who stood in opposition to President Kravchuk. But, he continues to support the work of the grass-roots councils and there is no future without the reorganization of these structures."

"Economic reforms will not take off without political changes," added Volodymyr Filenko, the chairman of New Ukraine. "We began as a movement of economic reform, and we felt that with our analysts and experts, we could transform Ukraine into a free market economy. But this naive way of thinking soon changed, as we realized that without political change, economic reform would be impossible. We then managed to topple the Fokin government. "Today, we understand that we must prepare for new elections in the new year," he concluded.

| Home Page |