NATO-Ukraine summit reassures Kyiv as it seeks membership in alliance (07/14/02)

NATO-Ukraine summit reassures Kyiv as it seeks membership in alliance

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - NATO Secretary General George Robertson and the ambassadors to NATO from its 19 member-countries spent two days in Ukraine on July 9-10 for the second NATO-Ukraine summit. NATO used the meeting - held on the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Charter on Distinctive Partnership between Ukraine and NATO - to assure Ukraine that it is wanted in the international security alliance and to encourage Kyiv to take the needed practical steps towards membership.

"NATO is willing to go as far as Ukraine is willing to go," Mr. Robertson emphasized several times during the course of two days of meetings with various state and government leaders, as well as at a conference on NATO-Ukraine relations. He also stated repeatedly that it was time to move from rhetoric to practical cooperation.

After the conclusion of the formal session of the Atlantic Council's NATO-Ukraine Commission at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Kyiv, which included a review of the past five years of cooperation, Mr. Robertson told reporters that Ukraine needs to approach the issue of membership constructively and vigorously.

"I say this emphatically, the NATO-Ukraine relationship has entered a new, very dynamic stage, but the rate of progress will depend primarily on Ukraine itself," explained Mr. Robertson. "It will be based on your needs and capabilities, your choices and possibilities and your determination to proceed on reforms.

The NATO chief said that while defense reform and military changes are essential elements of the transitions that must take place in Ukraine, completing overall political and economic reform, entrenching democratic principles, developing rule of law and securing freedom of the press are the central issues in the first step towards NATO.

"It is not simply about incorporating defense systems, it is about value systems," explained Mr. Robertson during a meeting with scholars and NATO experts at the Rus Hotel later that day.

He also said that the process for Ukraine would take time, and that Kyiv should not expect an invitation to join the alliance at NATO's Prague Summit in November.

Ukraine has regained a spot on the North Atlantic alliance's agenda with the somewhat unexpected announcement by its National Security and Defense Council on May 23 that it would move for membership in NATO. President Leonid Kuchma formalized the declaration with his signature on July 8. Many foreign policy experts had said prior to May 23 that Ukraine might have lost its strategic status within NATO after the defense alliance signed a special relationship with Russia that gives Moscow a seat at the NATO table on certain matters.

Mr. Robertson used his time in Kyiv to emphasize that NATO understands Ukraine's important geostrategic role in securing peace and stability on the European continent. He refuted an assertion made in the respected Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza that many ambassadors of NATO member-states do not support membership for Ukraine. He told reporters that every action by NATO comes only after consensus within its membership, adding that encouragement to Ukraine to join the organization must also be viewed this way.

"What I tell you today are not only the private views of the secretary general of NATO, but of all its members. When we move forward we move forward together," explained Mr. Robertson.

That view was reflected in the statement released by the Atlantic Council - the political decision-making body that consists of member-states' and ambassadors to NATO plus the secretary general - after the official NATO-Ukraine Commission session, in which they suggested "deepened political and practical cooperation to be included in a new NATO-Ukraine action plan that would take the NATO-Ukraine relationship to a qualitatively new level."

Meanwhile, comments by various Ukrainian leaders indicated that the country does not expect quick approval of its membership and realizes that while countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary may have short-cut NATO procedures by not being required to complete reforms in the military realm, Kyiv would have to go the full route.

Kyiv's current priority, however, is to have an agreement for a new special charter between Ukraine and NATO ready for approval in Prague in November, explained Foreign Affairs Minister Anatolii Zlenko. NATO ambassadors said they would support such a new charter.

During the Atlantic Council session, Mr. Zlenko read a statement from Mr. Kuchma in which the Ukrainian president told the NATO ambassadors he understood well what would be required of Ukraine.

"We understand that the way to NATO is a long, step-by-step process, and we are doing everything to make the interests of Ukraine and NATO closer step-by-step. This will guarantee irreversibly establishing in Ukraine the fundamentals of civil society, the supremacy of law and an effectively working market economy," said Mr. Kuchma.

Yevhen Marchuk, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, told reporters outside the Rus' Hotel, after the conference on NATO-Ukraine relations had just finished, that the process is detailed and exacting. He explained that a country must first submit a formal application, which could come before or after an official invitation is extended from NATO. After that it must fulfill a lengthy list of requirements called a Membership Action Plan, which involves the completion of political as well as technical requirements. He explained that a country must show that there is no chance that a pronouncement of intention to join could be subsequently retracted, and there must be no evidence that the country might leave NATO at some point.

He said that NATO also must make a determination on whether a decision to join was possibly made for internal political opportunity or benefit. He noted that one of the unbending requirements is that polls taken within the country must consistently show that at least 50 percent of the population supports NATO membership.

Ukraine has a considerable way to go to meet the last standard. A survey conducted by the Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies between June 17 and 25 involving 2,006 respondents suggested that Ukrainians are equally divided over NATO entry, with 32 percent for and 32 percent against. Another 22 percent said, "It is hard to say" whether they could support accession to NATO in a popular referendum.

During an address to the conference, however, Foreign Minister Zlenko noted to what extent attitudes over NATO membership by Ukrainians have changed over the last five years.

"The news [of wanting to join NATO] was not overly sensational. One may agree or disagree with the intention of Ukraine to join NATO, but nobody was taken by surprise," explained Mr. Zlenko. "If on [May] 23 the national council had declared Ukraine's intention to join the Tashkent Treaty [on defense ties with the CIS], that would have been a real sensation."

Indeed, protests over the visit of the NATO delegation to Ukraine were few and far between, and the rhetoric from the political left lacked the conviction of earlier days. About 100 demonstrators, mostly from the Communist Party and fringe leftist political organizations, protested before the Presidential Administration Building in Kyiv as the 19 NATO ambassadors and Mr. Robertson met with Mr. Kuchma. At the Rus' Hotel, site of the NATO-Ukraine conference, about 10 Green Movement activists protested NATO's role in Kosovo.

In Donetsk, where Mr. Marchuk escorted the NATO secretary general on the second day of his visit, Ukraine's chief national security official said that he was somewhat stunned by the lack of vociferous response from Russia.

"It is hard to believe that our decision did not beget hysteria in Russia," said Mr. Marchuk, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

In Donetsk Mr. Robertson visited a factory that will eventually be responsible for destroying some 400,000 anti-personnel land mines and turning their parts into kids' toys. Mr. Robertson said he wanted to visit Donetsk because it is in the most heavily populated region of Ukraine with much of the country's economic potential.

The anti-personnel mine effort is one of the various programs that NATO has undertaken in Ukraine as relations with Kyiv have deepened. The two sides are also deeply involved in flood control, as well as civil and natural disaster relief.

While some of the NATO ambassadors joined Mr. Robertson in Donetsk, others traveled to Lviv and Kharkiv. In each city the delegations held roundtables with political officials and residents. The point of the trips was two-fold: to give the delegations a better sense of the country, and to give Ukrainians some exposure to NATO and its leadership.

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