EDITORIAL: Kuchma's policies (09/26/99)

EDITORIAL

Kuchma's policies

While inundated with economic and political problems at home, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma can reasonably say that his foreign policy house is in order.

The president has steadfastly and successfully advanced his multi-vectored foreign policy, which is aimed at maintaining relations with countries of the former Soviet space, while reaching out to the West and Europe.

That policy was on display again in Yalta on September 10-11, where the Ukrainian president hosted a summit of 22 nations.

The purpose of the meeting was to continue a dialogue between the countries that lay at European's periphery with those at its heart and those moving closer.

As Mr. Kuchma put it, the issue was how to avert "the danger of a far more humane but no less dangerous 'paper curtain' being put up between Eastern Europe and Western Europe," as the European Union and NATO expand.

Mr. Kuchma, in putting the accent on the unity of Europe from the Baltics to the Black Sea, made it more clear that the reunion of Europe should proceed geopolitically not only from west to east, but also from north to south.

The 14 state leaders and eight diplomatic representatives did not find a solution to visa and customs problems associated with the inevitable expansion of the European Union to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, all of which make up Ukraine's western border. Nor did they have the answers to international arms and drug trafficking problems. Consensus on an oil route from the Caucasus through Ukraine to the Baltic countries also was not achieved.

What they did have a chance to develop was a dialogue and common understanding.

The spin that President Kuchma put on the Yalta show, which was more symbolic than results-oriented, was quite appropriate. No previous international gathering had officially rejected the decision made at the 1945 Yalta Conference, during which the leaders of the victorious Allied forces divided post-war Europe into two geopolitical camps.

That Mr. Kuchma saw the symbolism and seized the opportunity is to his credit.

Now the president is using his Yalta achievement along with his success at a nine-country summit in Lviv earlier this year as a springboard to a position for Ukraine on the U.N. Security Council. Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk made the case for Ukraine during his presentation before the United Nations at its opening session on September 21. Clearly, Ukraine has the stature today to hold one of the 10 non-permanent seats on the 15-member Security Council.

President Kuchma has warm relations with the United States and Canada. He speaks regularly with the leaders of Ukraine's two largest neighbors, Poland and Russia. And, as the Yalta summit showed, he knows with whom he must cultivate stronger ties to further Ukraine's national interests. In Yalta his energies were directed at Azerbaijan's President Gaidar Aliyev, whose country's vast oil resources are much needed by a Ukraine that relies much too much on Russia for fulfilling its energy needs.

Without Mr. Kuchma, who has developed a reputation as a responsible, level-headed and consensus-building leader in Central Europe, the Yalta summit could not have happened.

To get 22 presidents and prime ministers, or their official representatives, to attend a conference is no small feat, no matter the occasion. Because Mr. Kuchma is becoming a respected and trusted statesman whose voice is increasingly heard, he pulled it off.

Now, if only Mr. Kuchma could learn how to put his economic and political house in order ...

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