Gryshchenko to replace Zlenko as Ukraine's foreign affairs minister (09/07/03)

Gryshchenko to replace Zlenko as Ukraine's foreign affairs minister

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - President Leonid Kuchma announced on September 2 that he had replaced Minister of Foreign Affairs Anatolii Zlenko with Ukraine's current ambassador to the United States, Kostyantyn Gryshchenko. Mr. Zlenko reached the age of 65 in June, the legally mandated age of retirement for government workers.

In departing remarks during a final press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the day after the move was announced, Mr. Zlenko gave no sense that he was dissatisfied with being forced into retirement and offered only thanks that he was given the opportunity to serve.

"I am thankful that I had the unique opportunity to be a part of the formation and development of my county and its diplomatic corps," explained Mr. Zlenko.

Mr. Zlenko was appointed Ukraine's minister of foreign affairs in July 1990 and continued to serve in the administration of Leonid Kravchuk, the country's first elected president, after Ukraine declared independence in August 1991. Removed from the post in 1994, he was reappointed by President Leonid Kuchma in October 2000.

Mr. Zlenko began his diplomatic service in the diplomatic corps of the Soviet Union in 1967 and spent 14 years in various capacities as part of the diplomatic team from the Ukrainian SSR to UNESCO in Paris and later as Ambassador to France. He was also Ukraine's permanent representative to the United Nations from September 1994 to September 1997.

In his final remarks as foreign minister, Mr. Zlenko listed his achievements during his first round in office: the resolution of problems associated with Ukraine's decision to denuclearize; the peaceful splitting of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet between Russia and Ukraine; and resolution of problems involving Crimea's autonomy.

He noted successes during his second appointment in bringing Ukraine closer to NATO and achieving the country's participation in the Prague Summit of NATO last year. He also emphasized his successful efforts to repair frayed relations with the United States after the Kolchuha scandal.

"We kept the rudder tightly in the direction of European and Euro-Atlantic integration. To some degree this is a guarantee that a new Berlin Wall will not divide us from Europe," Mr. Zlenko emphasized.

Mr. Zlenko also stated that: "We resolved relations with Russia - and in a sense we put them on a positive systemic track and on equal footing, which was earlier absent."

Mr. Zlenko's retirement was not without some controversy. The press had closely tracked the approach of his 65th birthday in June because another prominent political figure in Ukraine, Kyiv Mayor Oleksander Omelchenko, who is elected as head of the City Council but appointed as mayor, was approaching retirement age as well. While Mr. Zlenko remained in President Kuchma's good favor, the president's relations with Mr. Omelchenko were not good, especially since Viktor Medvedchuk, Mr. Omelchenko's political arch-nemesis, became chief of staff of the presidential administration.

The question reporters wanted answered was whether Mr. Kuchma would force out Mr. Omelchenko in a political move under the pretext of his retirement age, while keeping Mr. Zlenko, whose work the president had praised. In June Mr. Kuchma had said he would not pressure his foreign affairs minister to stand aside.

Mr. Zlenko's replacement, U.S. Ambassador Gryshchenko, will become Ukraine's fourth minister of foreign affairs after having served in Washington since January 2000.

According to the Director of the Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies, Anatolii Hrytsenko, the career diplomat, who turns 50 in October, will have his work cut out for him in continuing a seemingly conflicted foreign policy, in which Kyiv officially has declared its intention to become both a part of all European structures as well as the nascent Eastward-looking "common economic space" that President Kuchma is pursuing.

"He will try to add some logic to the adoption of political decisions, which are too often resolved by a single person," explained Mr. Hrytsenko.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on August 4 that it had no information on whom the president would appoint to replace Mr. Gryshchenko in Washington.

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