Helsinki Commission hearing focuses on "Ukraine at the crossroads" (05/06/01)

Helsinki Commission hearing focuses on "Ukraine at the crossroads"

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - President Leonid Kuchma's top national security advisor, Yevhen Marchuk, told American lawmakers that the new Ukrainian Cabinet would retain some of ousted Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko's key ministers, that of economy and finance.

Appearing before the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission) on May 2 in Congress, he said that while that was his own personal view, it could be considered "very close to reality." The new government would be set within 10 days, he said.

Mr. Marchuk, who is secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, testified at the commission's hearing, titled "Ukraine at the Crossroads: 10 Years After Independence." Appearing with him were Jon Purnell, deputy special advisor to the U.S. secretary of state for the new independent states; Adrian Karatnycky, president of Freedom House; and Dr. Ariel Cohen, research fellow with The Heritage Foundation.

The wife of Ukrainian journalist Heorhii Gongadze, Myroslava Gongadze, and their two young daughters were present in the audience during the hearing. The journalist's disappearance and presumed murder gave rise to the so-called tape scandal and the current presidential crisis in Ukraine.

Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who chairs the Helsinki Commission, said that, given the importance of the U.S. relationship with Ukraine, the commission has become "increasingly concerned about the direction in which Ukraine appears to be heading."

"Pervasive, high-level corruption, the controversial conduct of authorities in the Gongadze investigation and ongoing human rights problems are raising legitimate questions about Ukraine's commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law," Sen. Campbell said.

Mr. Marchuk said that, while the tape scandal and the ouster of the Yushchenko government "complicated" the political process in Ukraine and became an area of interest for the U.S. and other governments, he views the existence of these conflicts in society as a "natural component of a complex process of the maturing of the young Ukrainian democracy."

The removal of the Yuschenko government was a "bad event" that sent a "bad signal" abroad, he said. "But, frankly speaking, we don't suppose that it is a tragedy," he added, calling it, rather, "a first lesson for our high-ranking politicians - that it's necessary to cooperate with Parliament."

Mr. Marchuk, who had served as Ukraine's prime minister for a little more than a year in 1995-1996, said Mr. Yuschenko made a political mistake: a "young man" with "very good ambitions," he thought he could push through reforms on his own, ignoring the political majority that had supported his reform program in the past.

Asked for his opinion on the toppling of the Yuschenko government, the State Department's Mr. Purnell said it was too early to fully assess its impact.

"The key litmus test here will be in the ability of the presidency and the Parliament, and whatever new government replaces the Yuschenko government, to rebuild the political consensus that allowed progress in the year 2000," he said.

"So far, indications that we are hearing from our Ukrainian colleagues are that reform will remain on track," he added.

On the latest hot issue in the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship, Mr. Purnell said the United States would not consider extraditing to Ukraine Maj. Mykola Melnychenko, President Kuchma's former bodyguard who secretly taped conversations in the president's office.

"If there should be such a request, it would really be moot, because we have no extradition treaty with Ukraine," he explained.

The United States recently granted asylum to Maj. Melnychenko as well as to Mrs. Gongadze and her children.

Freedom House President Adrian Karatnycky focused on the corruption issue in his presentation.

President Kuchma, if innocent of the allegations against him, was "ill-served" by his advisors who, in trying to cover up evidence of abuse of power, only reinforced "what many Ukrainian reformers and foreign governments have long believed: that Mr. Kuchma sits at the top of a corrupt, perhaps criminal structure of power."

"Whether he directs this system or is trapped by the structure of corrupt power that emerged in Ukraine as a result of the process of transition from communism to democracy, and to partial democracy and to partial market economics, is a matter of conjecture," Mr. Karatnycky said. "But what is clear is that there is a failure by President Kuchma and his security officials and the justice system of Ukraine to cope with this ... wide-scale looting of Ukraine's treasury through tax evasion, illegal siphoning of assets and the like."

However, Mr. Karatnycky asked U.S. policy-makers to keep in mind that Mr. Kuchma, "for all of the allegations and for all of issues for which he deserves criticism, is not a tyrant. He is not a [Belarusian President Alyaksandr] Lukashenka."

Ukraine has civic activity, an opposition in Parliament and a measure of political competition, he said. "And I think that that has to be kept in mind, because we are also speaking about the potentialities of a society to reform itself from within."

(The Ukrainian Weekly will carry a more detailed account of the May 2 Helsinki Commission hearing on Ukraine in the next issue.)

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