Shcherbak pleased with election results (11/17/96)

Shcherbak pleased with election results

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Yuri Shcherbak welcomed the re-election of President Bill Clinton as well as the re-election of Ukraine's supporters to the U.S. Congress.

The election results, he said, assure "four more years of stable development of Ukrainian-American relations" and the continuity of the existing friendly and bipartisan U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

In an interview on November 5, after most of the major results had become evident, the Ukrainian ambassador said that President Clinton's re-election was important because it meant that "the existing, experienced Democratic administration will remain in place."

"We're happy because we will continue to work with our friends, our partners, whom we have come to know very well," Dr. Shcherbak said. "And this means that we will not have to adapt to changes in Washington while the work of strengthening of U.S.-Ukrainian relations is progressing."

The ambassador was quick to add that the Embassy also "very much welcomes" the election victories of such Republican senators as Mitch McConnell (of Kentucky), "an old, true friend of Ukraine who has helped us very much in appropriating assistance for Ukraine," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (of North Carolina), and other supporters of Ukraine in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Ambassador Shcherbak said he has the "utmost respect" for the Republican challenger, Sen. Bob Dole, whom he called "a leading political figure who has in the past and continues to pay close attention to Ukrainian issues."

However, he added, changes at the highest levels of the U.S. government could have slowed the process of building the recently announced "strategic partnership" between the United States and Ukraine at a time when the "development of this closer relationship and partnership were gaining momentum."

The Ukrainian ambassador said that having a Democratic president and a Republican-ruled Congress was not detrimental to the development of the bilateral relationship.

"As some of our friends from other countries jealously tell us, Ukraine is a strange phenomenon, having, as it does, the support of both the Democrats and the Republicans," he said. This is evident in the administration's policies toward Ukraine, in the amounts of U.S. assistance for Ukraine as well as in some important resolutions passed by Congress, which were initiated by its Republican members, he explained.

While the traditional bipartisan approach in U.S. foreign policy may have waned in other parts of the world, he said, "that is not the case with respect to Ukraine there is one policy, that of supporting our independence."