Macedonian Friend

One can hardly find even one person in Macedonia who doesn’t know about Ukraine, and everybody sees it as a friend. Kyiv supported Skopje with arms supplies during the fight against Albanian separatists in Macedonia last year. With this our state has deserved the friendly attitude of the Macedonians, on the one hand, and irritation from NATO and the US, in part, on the other. Both Brussels and Washington demanded Ukraine halt arms supplies, because in their opinion this caused further destabilization in the region.

Last week President Leonid Kuchma went to Macedonia for a two-days visit. His Macedonian counterpart Boris Trajkovski estimated the current level of relations between Kyiv and Skopje as very high. In the words of the Macedonian leader, the successful cooperation between the two countries is based on their mutual trust. Both presidents stressed the need for enlivening economic cooperation for the effective functioning of the bilateral agreement On Free Trade. Incidentally, Macedonia was the only country in the region to sign such a document with Ukraine. As it became known during President Kuchma’s Balkans tour, Macedonian workers from the Granite Company will take part in the reconstruction of the Kyiv-Chop highway in Ukraine. At the same time, in Mr. Kuchma’s words, Ukrainian firms will be involved in natural gas consuming projects in Macedonia.

“We also agreed that both Macedonia and Ukraine’s strategic goal is obtaining full membership in European and Euro- Atlantic institutions, which forms a solid basis for our future cooperation,” President Trajkovski stated.

Mr. Kuchma, in his turn, drew the audience’s attention to Macedonia’s significant steps toward peace, political stability, and securing its territorial integrity and sovereignty. Answering journalists’ questions on the both countries’ strategic goal to enter NATO, Mr. Trajkovski stressed that both countries have accumulated enough experience to share with each other. “Both our countries are serious candidates for NATO and EU membership. Macedonia is in somewhat worse situation, but Ukraine has a special relationship with the alliance,” he said.

Mr. Kuchma stated that Ukraine has been NATO’s active partner in the last few years. “During the crisis in Macedonia President Trajkovski and I consulted with NATO about our activities,” he added.