Progress Almost Invisible
The eighth session of the economic cooperation committee of the Ukrainian-US Commission, also known as the Kuchma-Gore Commission, held in Kyiv on November 2-3, failed to clear up the main problem: why Ukrainian-American economic cooperation still remains “underdeveloped,” as former US Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer once said. The post-session press conference only delivered a lecture on the topic of “good contacts and intensive relations.” Perhaps we could have expected something more.
The committee worked against the backdrop of the recent US congressional decision to appropriate $170 million for the development of Ukrainian-American cooperation. For this reason, top on the agenda of these discussion was the range of sectors eligible for these funds. William Taylor, coordinator of US aid to the newly independent states, said the programs of students and youth exchange, development of the Internet’s Ukrainian segment, and AIDS control are the most promising projects. As he put it, the number of US-aided Ukrainian small businesspeople could increase from the current 200 to 1500. Also in the pipeline are aid projects in the Ukrainian agrarian sector.
Energy and the environment were identified as two most important topics of the Kyiv discussions. Two working groups have been set up to this end. The US shares Ukrainian preoccupation over the completion of construction of the Khmelnytsky and Rivne nuclear power plants, US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual said. He added that the G7 had already approved the loan, so now the ball is in Ukraine’s court. Incidentally, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ivan Pliushch is supposed to make a proposal that the Chornobyl nuclear power plant should continue functioning after December 15, the closure deadline announced by the President, should the EBRD fail to furnish the loan.
The agreement signed between the US government-run Agency for International Development and Kharkiv oblast on a $535,000 US governmental grant for choosing a heat-supply operator should perhaps demonstrate that the Kharkiv Initiative, now hardly mentioned at all, is more alive than dead.
The US ambassador thinks the recurrent US antidumping lawsuits against the Ukrainian exporters of metallurgical products is a widely-accepted normal practice.
Mr. Pascual made it clear the US will not interfere in the problem of laying new gas pipelines from Russia to Western Europe, bypassing Ukraine. In his words, Ukraine should prove it can manage its gas pipelines well, while Europe requires more gas. In other words, this is your own problem.
