EDITORIAL: Certification: hardly a ringing endorsement (02/28/99)

EDITORIAL

Certification: hardly a ringing endorsement

The certification of Ukraine went down to the wire. As of the night of February 18, the date the U.S. secretary of state's report on certification was due to be submitted to Congress, there had been no news. In fact, Washington correspondent Yaro Bihun reported that talks were ongoing through the day between officials in Kyiv and Washington regarding the resolution of investors' disputes. The official announcement came the next morning, just as we were going to press: "Ukraine had made sufficient progress on economic reforms, including the resolution of U.S. investor complaints, to warrant release of all $195 million in FREEDOM Support Act assistance" for 1999.

The reaction from those in the know in Washington: Whew! It was close. A collective sigh of relief could be heard all the way to here. After all, if certification had not been granted, Ukraine stood to lose up to $72 million in U.S. foreign aid. And, there was a distinct possibility that Ukraine might not be certified, as its record in terms of economic reform was certainly not stellar, and clearly not without fault.

That is why the call had gone out to Ukrainian American community members via Action Items published in this newspaper (and other media) to contact their senators and representatives and ask them to convey to the secretary of state the importance of certifying Ukraine in terms of supporting Ukraine's transition to a free market economy and recognizing Ukraine's role in stability and peace in Central/Eastern Europe, as well as promoting the strategic interests of the United States. Apparently, the call to action worked. Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as the business community reacted. In the forefront was the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, whose five co-chairs wrote to Madeleine Albright.

On the very day that Secretary Albright was to report on certification, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe held a briefing on

"Nations in Transit." Adrian Karatnycky, president of Freedom House, argued that even though some of the programs to help the NIS have not been successful, "In the absence of intervention and engagement of the West, the outcomes ... could have been even more harmful than they have been." The West should also be realistic about what can be achieved in these countries, added Prof. Alexander Motyl of Rutgers University. It cannot force reform but only "nudge" it along ... but the West dare not isolate these former Soviet countries back into their own "ghetto," where "70 years of totalitarian communism destroyed the political elites, destroyed the cultural elites, destroyed the society, destroyed whatever markets existed, destroyed whatever civil society existed, and transformed whatever incipient political classes these countries had into bureaucrats and apparatchiks of the Communist Party." As regards certification, Mr. Karatnycky emphasized this is directly related to the larger issue of whether the U.S. wants Ukraine to be integrated into global and West European structures, "or whether we don't want that, and are willing to accept the consequences."

Ultimately, arguments for certification appear to have outweighed the potential negative consequences of non-certification. And thus Ukraine was given the go-ahead to receive further U.S. assistance. But, there was a caveat in the official announcement: "This administration and the Congress remain very concerned about the uneven pace of reform and the difficult investment climate in Ukraine. We continue to urge the government of Ukraine to accelerate the market reform process and improve the climate for foreign investors by resolving remaining disputes."

Our hope is that Ukraine's leaders will understand how close they came to losing on the certification issue and will work that much harder to propel reform.

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