The Intermediate Finish of Foreign Policy
On December 10, two state secretaries at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Oleksandr Chaly and Yury Sergeyev, summed up - by request of journalists — Ukraine’s foreign policy in 2002. The picture they painted was traditionally ambiguous and, as always, multi-vectored.
As for Kyiv-Moscow relations, it will be recalled that President Leonid Kuchma had tried to appraise them very precisely, saying that Russia is Ukraine’s “most strategic” partner. This partnership has concretely resulted in at least two “breakthrough” decisions. Firstly, according to Mr. Chaly, the official instruments of the joint Ukrainian-Russian gas consortium are going to be legally registered in late January 2003. Secondly, an agreement on free trade zone is already in the making. The latter item is not new in the bilateral relations. Will the north-eastern neighbor change meet us halfway this time? Word has it he will provided Ukraine joins the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC). State Secretary Chaly, who had previously been flatly dismissing this idea, also stuck to his guns on December 10. “Ukraine considers the status of EAEC observer as the most optimal form of cooperation with Russia within the framework of this organization,” the diplomat emphasized. Mr. Sergeyev in turn focused on the activation of GUUAM (another post-Soviet economic association of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova). Incidentally, GUUAM opted for a free trade zone as far back as in July 2002.
“The outgoing year was crucial for Ukrainian intentions or Euro-Atlantic integration,” thus Mr. Sergeyev assessed relations with NATO. In his words, the May 23 resolution of the National Security and Defense Council was “an event that knitted together the government and society.” Of the same opinion was Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko who said Kyiv was going to further move towards Euro-Atlantic integration by fulfilling the provisions of the Ukraine-NATO Action Plan and the 2003 Action Plan adopted in Prague. Nor did Mr. Sergeyev forget “the Kolchuga affair.” He said, in particular, that “the government took a sober view of the situation and participated in the Prague summit in two formats, thus confirming its determination to follow the Euro-Atlantic course.” “We were and are not going to prove anything to anybody. We urged the UN Security Council Committee 661 to carry out an expert examination, so that all might see that Ukraine had no military-technical cooperation with Iraq,” Mr. Sergeyev stressed.
“This year was very fruitful, as far as Ukraine’s relations with the European Union are concerned,” Mr. Chaly, State Secretary for European Integration, noted. He emphasized that 2002 was the first year that saw the beginning of effective cooperation in the field of justice and law enforcement, when the two sides took a joint stand on migration, visa treatment, and combating terrorism. Mr. Chaly also pointed out that the EU’s share in the foreign trade turnover is gradually on the rise. “Today, we expect a 2% increase of the total commodity turnover with the EU. This is progress, for we have lost an estimated several hundred million dollars this year in our trade with the Russian Federation,” the diplomat noted.
We still manage to keep up, if erratically, a foreign political balance (for example, relations with the Unite States have touched an all-time low; some even say that the Ukrainian embassy in Washington “is out of work”). The Kolchuga scandal has left its imprint on Kyiv’s diplomatic activities. This country’s efforts were aimed at saving the image and avoiding the likely international isolation rather than at achieving the strategic goals. In these conditions, the question whether our diplomacy could achieve more remains rhetorical. In any case, it is the President who has the last say in shaping Ukraine’s foreign policy.
