Turning the pages back... March 20, 1994 (03/20/05)

Turning the pages back...

March 20, 1994

Back in 1994 on March 20, this newspaper carried a front-page story on the visit to Kyiv by former U.S. President Richard Nixon. According to Marta Kolomayets, our Kyiv correspondent at that time, during a one-hour meeting with President Leonid Kravchuk on March 16, Mr. Nixon discussed Ukraine-U.S. relations and Ukraine-Russia relations, as well as the progress of economic reforms in this country besieged by economic hardship.

"I consider Ukraine, its independence to be vitally important. I, therefore, want to find out from Mr. Kravchuk what the prospects are for economic reform, economic progress and his analysis of current Russian-Ukrainian relations, which I understand is very difficult," said the 81-year-old former president after he landed at Boryspil Airport.

Arriving from Moscow, where he spent a week talking to opposition leaders about Russia's political and economic future but was denied a meeting with Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin, Mr. Nixon said he regretted that he would not have time to meet with Ukraine's opposition forces.

"I wish my schedule would permit this, to meet with opposition leaders. And, I received a letter from Mr. Kravchuk indicating that I should do so," he added. "We would not have had a Yeltsin incident here in Ukraine," he told reporters who met with him and Mr. Kravchuk after their closed meeting.

At the airport, Mr. Nixon said: "I did something in Russia that no one has done, something that I have not done in my 10 visits to the Soviet Union. I met with every opposition leader; I covered everybody. It is very important in a democracy not just to meet with the leaders in power," he explained.

Mr. Nixon also told reporters during a 20-minute impromptu press conference that he considers Russia's policy toward Ukraine to be more aggressive since parliamentary elections held there last December. "I do not mean that most of the leaders in Russia today go along with the extreme - [Vladimir] Zhirinovsky and others. But, there is no doubt that there will be in the future occasions when the United States will look at both Russia and Ukraine, and ask which it should choose," he said.

Noting that President Bill Clinton had asked him to report on his trip after he returned to the United States, he said that he did not share the concern of some who think there may be conflict between the two neighboring states. He said President Kravchuk agreed with his view that there can be a peaceful resolution to Ukrainian-Russian troubles.

Source: "Nixon comes calling in Kyiv; Stresses Ukraine's 'vital importance,' " by Marta Kolomayets, Kyiv Press Bureau, The Ukrainian Weekly, March 20, 1994, Vol. LXII, No. 12.

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