Panel discusses Ukraine's future and role for the U.S. (02/20/05)

Panel discusses Ukraine's future and role for the U.S.

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - With the new government tapped by President Viktor Yushchenko in place in Ukraine, the U.S. government and those in Washington's foreign policy establishment are looking at how the United States can best help the new president meet the high expectations placed on him domestically and internationally.

A discussion of what Ukraine's Orange Revolution brought about and its perspectives for the future was held here on February 10 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. On the panel was the State Department's point man on Ukraine, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs John F. Tefft, and two former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine, Steven Pifer and William Green Miller.

Presenting the U.S. government's position on Ukraine, Ambassador Tefft said that Washington has been in the forefront in supporting Ukraine and the "Ukrainian people's quest for freedom, independence and democracy." And since the autumn of 2003, the primary focus was on the presidential election, expending about $18 million to support local civil society groups, voter education, get-out-the-vote campaigns, programs on working with the media, non-partisan training of political party and election officials, and election observers.

None of this activity - contrary to some Russian and other critics - was designed to support any particular candidate, Ambassdor Tefft said. "Our support really was for the process" or, as he quoted what Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had said in an interview, "Our candidate was the Ukrainian people."

He said that, thanks to the early discussions with President Yushchenko by former Secretary of State Colin Powell at the inauguration in Kyiv and by Vice-President Dick Cheney a few days later in Poland, "We have a good sense, I think, of his priorities, and it is our goal to try to help him meet those priorities, to deal with the challenges that he has set."

Mr. Tefft outlined a few of these areas for U.S. assistance, including taking the lead in a NATO Partnership for Peace program to assist Ukraine in the destruction of excess and outmoded small arms, munitions and portable surface-to-air missiles, and a contribution of the "tens of millions of dollars" to the construction of a new safe containment structure at Chornobyl.

In other areas, he said, "we are trying to significantly increase" U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including through the Freedom Support Act. There may be some additional funds for Ukraine in the administration's supplemental budget request to Congress, he added, and the administration "hopes Congress will soon address" the issue of "graduating" Ukraine from the Jackson-Vanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974.

Ambassador Tefft said Washington also stands ready to help Ukraine join the World Trade Organization, although honoring intellectual property rights in Ukraine is still a problem that must be addressed. Washington is prepared to support Ukraine in joining NATO, "if it so chooses" and undertakes some necessary defense, economic and political reforms, and Washington will also try to help Ukraine's efforts to join the European Union.

As for President Yushchenko's stated intent to withdraw Ukraine's military contingent from Iraq, the United States understands that to be his "eventual goal," as Mr. Tefft put it. "But he has assured us the he would only do so as the situation warranted and in close consultation with the United States and other coalition partners," he added.

Presidents George W. Bush and Yushchenko may discuss that and other bilateral issues during "a short opportunity" while at the NATO summit in Brussels on February 22, as well as during the Ukrainian president's first visit to Washington, which Ambassador Tefft said would happen in the spring. (Since then, officials of the Ukrainian government have announced that the visit would take place in the first week of April.)

As for Washington's immediate intentions in the bilateral relationship, he said: "My own observation within the U.S. government is that there is a very clear sense that we now have to get very serious, to put real resources to it, to really work to make sure that the changes that have been mentioned are brought into being - that we deliver, that we help President Yushchenko and his team deliver on that. And that, I think, goes from the top on down."

Mr. Pifer, who was ambassador to Ukraine in 1998 to 2000 and then preceded Ambassador Tefft at his State Department position, did not disagree about the imperative of such action on the part of Washington.

With the election of President Yushchenko, the expectations are understandably high, both in Ukraine and in the West, he said.

"I would say that today Ukraine has the best prospect that it has had in the 13 years since independence to really break with the past and move to become a real democratic, market economy and to become a normal European state," Ambassador Pifer explained.

He cautioned, however, that the new government faces many formidable challenges. Domestically - in addition to building a political coalition, dealing with the Yanukovych voters, and improving the business environment - it has to prioritize the more that 100 necessary reforms it has planned and it must show at least some early results.

"What we should be looking at is our assistance programs and re-calibrate them so that we're putting a maximum amount of assistance to those areas that the (Yushchenko) government has focused on now," Mr. Pifer stressed. In the area of foreign policy, he said, President Yushchenko has to move to open the door to Europe while, at the same time, dealing with a "very nervous neighbor" - Russia.

He suggested that the United States can help in this area as well by working to improve Russia's relations with the West as Ukraine moves in that direction. "The Orange Revolution and becoming president was the easy part," Ambassador Pifer said in his conclusion. "Now Viktor Yushchenko has to deal with the hard part, which is to succeed as president."

Mr. Miller, who served as America's second ambassador to Ukraine in 1993 to 1998, characterized the recent changes in Ukraine as "revolutionary" - they ushered in a new system of values and a new moral order, which is based on entirely different principles than those prevalent in the old Soviet times.

And that is reflected personally in President Yushchenko and many of the Cabinet and other senior appointments in the new government, Ambassador Miller noted. "All the way down the line, I think you will see very significant changes, particularly rooting out first-order corruption, that is, the use of public office for personal gain. There will be laws on conflict of interest, and I expect there will be prosecutions."

In response to a question, neither of the two former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine said that they could have expected anything like the "Orange Revolution" to happen.

"I did believe that Yushchenko could win," Ambassador Miller said, "that if it was a fair election, he would win."

"What I was not sure about was whether a fair election could be achieved," he said.

Ambassador Pifer noted that both he and his diplomatic colleague were in "good company" in not being able to foresee such an uprising in Ukraine. Nobody in the U.S. government nor on the Yushchenko team, for that matter, expected it, he said.

"I suspect that Mr. Yanukovych and Mr. Kuchma didn't expect it," he added. "And I guess, also, the Russians didn't expect it."

"It was precisely because it was that thing that was so hard to predict - which was the Ukrainian people saying, 'We're not going to take this; we're going to go out and stop this - that's what makes this, I think, the most remarkable thing in that part of the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall," Ambassador Pifer stated.

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