NEWSBRIEFS (03/22/98)

NEWSBRIEFS

Moroz says Ukraine is slave to West

KYIV - Oleksander Moroz, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada and leader of the Socialist Party, said while campaigning on March 13 that the government is a slave to Western institutions, Interfax reported. Mr. Moroz said President Leonid Kuchma and the government "blindly implement Western prescriptions instead of making their own economic policy." He added that Ukraine is being transformed by such policies into a "raw materials provider for other countries." Meanwhile, an International Monetary Fund delegation left Kyiv on March 14 without agreeing on provisions for releasing the next tranche of an urgently needed loan, Interfax reported. Vice Prime Minister Serhii Tyhypko said the IMF may still provide the $50 million tranche, but that there are "certain conditions" Kyiv has not yet met. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Crimean Tatars demand suffrage

SYMFEROPOL - Some 3,000 Tatars demonstrated in the Crimean capital of Symferopol on March 10 for the right of non-citizens to vote in the upcoming elections, ITAR-TASS reported. The protesters asked the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada to pass a law allowing Crimean Tatars without Ukrainian citizenship to take part in the March 29 elections, in which the Crimean Parliament also will be elected. Since the late 1980s, some 250,000 Tatars have returned to Crimea from Central Asia, where they were exiled under Stalin. An estimated one-third of those Tatars do not have Ukrainian citizenship. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Crimean Tatars may obstruct elections

SYMFEROPOL - Mustafa Jemilev, the head of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis (Assembly), said on March 13 that Tatars are dissatisfied with the electoral law and may disrupt elections, ITAR-TASS reported. Mr. Jemilev said he could not rule out civil disobedience during the March 29 elections if Tatars demands are not met. He added that the Crimean Parliament will rule on Tatar demands on March 24. Mr. Jemilev said that unless a quota of 14 seats in the Crimean Parliament is reserved for Tatars, they will not be represented in the legislature. He said this demand could be met if the Parliament rules that all Tatars in Crimea can vote, regardless of their citizenship status. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Soccer world splits in politics

LVIV - Ukraine's soccer world, like the rest of the nation of 51.5 million, has been split in the run-up to the parliamentary elections later this month. The country's best club, Dynamo Kyiv, has sided with the moderate Social Democratic Party (United), which the club collectively joined. On March 10, Karpaty Lviv from the west of the country and fifth in the premier league, moved to the Agrarian Party, which is seen as the party of power in rural areas. "It's time to make our position clear. We know that Dynamo has gotten backing from the Social Democrats, but we have been getting backing from (Lviv) Oblast Chairman Mykhailo Hladii, who is a member of Agrarian Party," said Gabor Vaida, Karpaty's director. "There was a meeting of the team and we all decided to join the Agrarian Party." The Vseukrainskie Viedomosti daily said that 1975 European Footballer of the Year Oleh Blokhin, once of Dynamo Kyiv, is running for Verkhovna Rada for the opposition Hromada Party. (Reuters)

Election commission announces website

KYIV - The chairman of the Central Election Commission, Mykhailo Riabets, announced the official unveiling on March 12 of a CEC website on the Internet for the upcoming parliamentary elections on March 29. The site is designed to inform and educate interested parties about the electoral process. It is divided into six sections, which include electoral principles, legislation and regulations, the electoral system, and party and electoral bloc platforms. The website's address is http://www.cecu.kiev.ua. (Eastern Economist)

Ukraine to join space technology group

KYIV - Oleksander Nehoda, the head of the National Space Agency of Ukraine, said on March 9 that Ukraine will join the Missile Technology Control Regime, DPA reported. He said the move will establish Ukraine as a world leader in producing and exporting space technology. The group coordinates exports among member-countries with the goal of preventing the proliferation of missiles capable of carrying warheads. Ukraine inherited one of the largest rocket manufacturing programs in the world when the Soviet Union collapsed. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Tarasiuk on Ukraine and NATO

KYIV - Borys Tarasiuk, the Ukrainian ambassador to the Benelux countries and head of the Ukrainian mission at NATO, said on March 10 that Kyiv's membership in the alliance will be discussed in the future, ITAR-TASS and the Eastern Economist reported. Mr. Tarasiuk said Kyiv cannot currently raise the question of joining NATO since certain "conditions for this have not been created." But he did not exclude the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO "when the time is ripe," since, he said, NATO is the key institution of European security. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Udovenko says "no" to NATO

TOKYO - Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Minister Hennadii Udovenko said in Tokyo on March 11 that Ukraine, like Russia, has no intention of becoming a NATO member, ITAR-TASS reported. Mr. Udovenko, who was in Japan in his capacity as president of the United Nations General Assembly, said Ukraine "is a non-aligned country and does not want to join" NATO. He added, however, that Ukraine will seek cooperation with the alliance. Volodymyr Horbulin, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said in Kyiv the same day that his country "has no plans to join NATO," but is working with it to "ensure collective security in Europe." Those statements differ from the equivocal comments made the previous day by Boris Tarasiuk, the head of the Ukrainian mission to NATO. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Foreign affairs minister in Prague

PRAGUE - Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Minister Hennadii Udovenko and his Czech counterpart, Jaroslav Sedivy, met on March 9 in Prague and discussed economic cooperation between their countries. Mr. Udovenko told journalists later that the two states can "fruitfully cooperate in areas such as nuclear power engineering, machine-building, transportation and space technologies."' He said he is satisfied with the "large trade turnover" of the two countries, but worries about the possibility of a Czech decision to re-introduce visa requirements for citizens of countries that are not members of the European Union. Mr. Sedivy said a decision on Ukrainian citizens is "still pending," CTK and ITAR-TASS reported. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Defense minister in Hungary

BUDAPEST - Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksander Kuzmuk told his Hungarian counterpart, Gyorgy Keleti, on March 9 in Budapest that he hopes Ukrainian-Hungarian military cooperation will lead to the creation of a joint peacekeeping force modeled on the Polish-Ukrainian unit. He also told Mr. Keleti that one of the "basic principles" of Ukrainian foreign policy is to join European institutions. In response to a journalist's question, Mr. Kuzmuk said Ukraine was the first country in the world to voluntarily renounce nuclear weapons and therefore is entitled to demand that no nuclear weapons be stationed on its neighbors' territory, Hungarian media reported. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Moldova protests border change

CHISINAU - Prime Minister Ion Ciubuc on March 10 protested Ukraine's decision to fence off a site on the Danube estuary and thereby push the border 100 meters into Moldovan territory, ITAR-TASS reported. That move deprived Moldova of its only access point to the river in the area, where it is building an oil terminal with aid from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. After visiting the site, Mr. Ciubuc said the Ukrainian move is "contrary to international law" and said Ukraine cannot proceed with the fencing until ongoing bilateral talks on border delimitation are completed. Moldovan Deputy Foreign Minister Vasile Sova, who heads the Moldovan delegation to those talks, told RFE/RL's Chisinau bureau that mutually acceptable solutions have been reached in "90 percent" of such cases. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Moldovans regret demise of USSR

CHISINAU - Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of Moldovans believe that the demise of the USSR was detrimental for Moldova, according to a poll conducted by the independent institute Opinia. Of those questioned, 18.8 percent were of the opinion that the demise of the Soviet Union did "more good than harm." Moreover, 50.1 percent were opposed to a multi-party system, 32.7 percent were against democracy, 29.6 percent were opposed to private property, and 25.7 percent were not in favor of freedom of emigration. But 59.7 favored freedom of speech and a free press, while 65.7 percent want closer ties with Western countries, Infotag reported on February 6. (RFE/RL Newsline)

CIS summit is postponed

MOSCOW - The Russian presidential press service on March 17 confirmed the postponement of the CIS Customs Union summit and the summit of CIS presidents, planned for March 18 and 19-20, respectively, RFE/RL's Moscow bureau reported. President Boris Yeltsin has instructed Vice Prime Minister Ivan Rybkin, CIS Affairs Minister Anatolii Adamishin, and First Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Boris Pastukhov to travel to CIS states to coordinate new dates for those meetings. CIS Executive Secretary Ivan Korotchenia told Interfax that the meetings are likely to be rescheduled for April 23 and 24. A Kremlin statement said President Yeltsin was eager to attend the summits but was forced to follow doctors' orders while he recovers from a respiratory infection. However, some Russian commentators believe Mr. Yeltsin's health was merely a pretext for postponing the summit. Kommersant-Daily argued on March 18 that the delay was prompted by a rapidly worsening "illness" of the CIS itself. Kazakstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said he hopes the "sudden interval" will give other leaders a chance to conduct a "deeper study of Kazakstan's proposals." Mr. Nazarbayev was scheduled to speak at the CIS summit and the meeting of the four-country customs union. Tajikistan's President Imomali Rakhmonov said he is disappointed that the summit is delayed, as his country is due to be accepted into the four-country customs union. Ukraine's Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Anton Buteiko said the postponement of the CIS summit is due to technical and other reasons, not Mr. Yeltsin's illness. Mr. Buteiko said uncertainty about whether Azerbaijan's President Heidar Aliev would attend, conditions set by Georgia for its participation and the Armenian presidential elections are the more likely the reasons. He also said Ukraine did not receive all the documents to be discussed at the summit. But Russian CIS Affairs Minister Adamishin said on March 18 that everything has been prepared for the summit and that all documents are in the appropriate hands. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Communists mark referendum anniversary

MOSCOW - Supporters of several Communist groups demonstrated outside the Moscow embassies of all former Soviet republics, except for Belarus, on March 17, the anniversary of the 1991 referendum on preserving the USSR. In that referendum, 76 percent voted in favor of preserving the union. (They were not given the option of voting for independence from the USSR, and the referendum was boycotted by the Baltic states, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova.) Demonstrators did not picket the Embassy of Belarus; instead they sent a message of support to Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Interfax reported that some of the 100 protesters outside the Latvian Embassy in Moscow threw eggs at the building and shouted slogans denouncing "fascism" in Latvia. (RFE/RL Newsline)