Lisbon summit of OSCE discusses future course for European security (12/08/96)

Lisbon summit of OSCE discusses future course for European security

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma and 54 other Western leaders met in Lisbon, Portugal, on December 2-3 to set the course for European security into the 21st century.

Discussions centered on relations between the established Western European states and new members from the East. Consensus was achieved on the expansion of NATO, with only Russia continuing to protest NATO's future movement eastward.

The summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) agreed on a "Comprehensive Security Model for the 21st Century," and, although all attendees signed it, Russia's Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin dismayed world leaders by blasting the agreement to expand NATO to include some Central European countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

"Yes, Russia has no veto power over the alliance's expansion, but nobody has a veto on our rights to defend our own national interests," he said, according to a Washington Post report.

The agreement also includes a comprehensive plan for troop reductions and for renewed arms reduction talks among the countries.

President Kuchma, who was there with Foreign Minister Hennadiy Udovenko, Secretary of the Security Council Volodymyr Horbulin and the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada's Committee on Foreign Relations and Matters of the CIS, Borys Oliynyk, addressed the summit meeting on December 2. He said "the biggest threat to state security in today's world comes from internal factors, such as the social and economic environment, human rights issues and politics," according to various press reports.

He laid special emphasis on the need to abide by the principle of "the inviolability of European borders as the foundation of the security system." President Kuchma then called on the OSCE to outline "clearly and unambiguously" sanctions to be implemented should violations of borders occur. He also called on European states to develop mechanisms to assure the security of states that do not fall within "collective defense structures."

Discussions on Ukraine

At a December 4 press briefing at the Presidential Administration building, the president's foreign affairs advisor, Volodymyr Ohrysko, said discussions on Ukraine had been a central aspect of the summit.

He said President Kuchma had spoken with 16 world leaders in the two days and that all but three of the meetings were requested by the other parties. "I believe that such requests reflect our authoritative standing in the international community, and of Ukraine as a stabilizing factor in Europe," he explained. "Countries listen to Ukraine and analyze its viewpoint."

Mr. Ohrysko also expounded briefly on Ukraine's official stance in regard to NATO's decision to expand eastward. He explained that NATO-Ukraine relations came up at virtually all the meetings and that Ukraine had expressed its belief time and time again that it is not against the Central European countries joining NATO, if that is their desire. "Today Ukraine thinks that it benefits its own position to maintain close relations with NATO. What has to be decided are the parameters and the mechanisms for cooperation," he said. "We cannot ignore these processes and are looking for our place within them," said Mr. Ohrysko.

He called Ukraine's position a "realistic" one, based on "the situation surrounding Ukraine today." However, he said no decisions on NATO's expansion should be undertaken without an open dialogue with all the countries that would be affected, specifically referring to Russia and its continued resistance to such a move.

Among the 16 state leaders with whom President Kuchma met at the Lisbon summit were Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany, with whom he spoke of German business investment; Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, with whom talks were called "very private," and United States Vice-President Al Gore.

After his meeting with Mr. Gore, President Kuchma announced that the Kuchma-Gore Commission will hold its first meeting during the first half of 1997. His chief of national security, Mr. Horbulin, said the two also discussed the creation of a U.S.-Israel-Ukraine triangle, which Mr. Kuchma had first mentioned to Israeli leaders during his recent visit there.