aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] UKRAINIAN COMMENT-IRAQGATE

[Taras Kuzio <t.kuzio@utoronto.ca>]

--
CENTER FOR PEACE, CONVERSION AND FOREIGN POLICY OF UKRAINE


UKRAINIAN MONITOR


Weekly issue #39/2002
Headlines & Comments 23.09.02 - 29.09.02

USA Accused of Ukrainian Authorities in Violations of UN Sanctions


Comments:

Incrimination of an “Attempt” Upon Cooperation with Iraq as Another Element
of the Ukrainian Crisis

The political situation in Ukraine on which the opposition has been asking
permission to talk in the Supreme Rada for so long beyond any condition has
acquired some clear traits of a crisis. The president and his adherents have
experienced another, external blow which is probably more tangible than
those ones he can be threatened with on the opposition’s part.
The present crisis is rooted in its forerunner of 2000-2001. Exactly an
unsettled state of the most of the then conflicts has caused today’s
exacerbation in the political life. Not in the last place this concerns a
subject who is being actively discussed these days: a sudden letdown of “the
international image of Ukraine” provoked by the claims made by the USA on
possible cooperation with Iraq on the Ukrainian authorities’ part.
Ukraine has found itself in a “pleasant” company: for today only two
countries in the world are insistently calling upon international
organizations’ inspectors. And if such inspections do not give proofs of
Kolchuga early warning systems supply to Iraq, they are unlikely to refute
the fact of a conversation during which such plans were being developed
among the senior state officials itself. And the American part is
accentuating attention on the very precedent of talks on concealed contacts
with Iraq in the face of UN sanctions fixed on Melnychenko’s recordings. In
case the talks had taken place in the presidential apartments and the arms
did not however come to Iraq it is still not a cause for rejoicing for the
Ukrainian president. Weapons sales against the sanctions are a violation of
the international law. And discussing of intentions to break the
international rule in favour of an implacable opponent of one’s own
strategic partner is a real proof of preparedness to betr!
ay the last. In fact, because of an “attempt upon sales” the Ukrainian
authorities have made a seven-league jump to real abolition of perhaps very
disproportional but extremely necessary for the country partnership, which
had been declared in a status of strategic one.
Ukraine is unlikely to cease from its being comprehended as a “key” state
for the USA’s national interests, though. The outspoken claims can hardly
mean “an insight” of the USA’s ruling elites concerning peculiarities of the
political regime of today’s Ukraine: the essential idea of the last has
already been quite adequately apprehended by transoceanic interested elites.
The official statements’ matter accentuating the reconsideration of the
policy concerning the president and “the central government” particularly
can serve as the evidence of such a thesis.
Values (of liberal democracy) and interests (USA’s state and national) not
always coincide with each other – and this is not “discovering of America”.
The present Ukrainian authorities has succeeded in their prolonged
maneuvering within such a medium, probably, not less than in the
geopolitical swinging between Russia and the West. Now the information on
the Ukrainian senior officials’ actions has driven the influence of both
factors to resonance: these actions can be considered as both threatening to
the principles of freedom and democracy and as detrimental to the national
interests of the USA (even if potentially). At that the functional bearing
nevertheless belongs to the last factor.
Oles Lisnychuk, “Ukrainian Monitor”