Real promises

Poland’s Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski will probably long remember his first official visit to Ukraine. During his recent visit he met with two Ukrainian prime ministers in Kyiv: the current government leader Viktor Yanukovych and a former one, Yulia Tymoshenko, whom he addressed as “Mrs. Prime Minister” twice during the meeting.

But clearly, Kaczynski’s main success was obtaining a promise from Yanukovych to help improve relations between Poland and Russia, which have become exacerbated because of Poland’s intention to block the negotiations between the EU and Russia concerning the new Partnership and Collaboration Agreement.

“We hope that the questions between Poland and Russia and between the EU and Russia will be settled in the nearest future. Ukraine is also interested in this and is ready to assist this process,” Yanukovych said after the first session of the Ukraine-Poland Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation, responding to a request from journalists to comment on the situation that has emerged in Polish-Russian relations.

It has already become a tradition at meetings of high-ranking leaders of both countries to discuss the Odesa-Brody-Plotsk pipeline construction project, which has not been able to go forward. During the meeting of the commission, the Polish and Ukrainian sides discussed the question of carrying out this project. The Ukrainian prime minister called it a “real project that should be filled with content.” He also pointed out that the governments of the two countries see consistency in the steps to realize this project, and the first step should be to start the Odesa-Brody-Kharlup work. According to Yanukovych, the interest of Ukraine’s partners — the Caspian Basin countries — in settling this question has heightened optimism.

In his turn Prime Minister Kaczynski expressed the hope that this project will be completed. “I don’t have the nerve to set a deadline for completing this project, but we have the financial means to realize it,” the Polish leader said.

Ukrainian experts are not very inclined to share the optimism surrounding this project. Mykhailo HONCHAR, vice-president of the Strategy-1 Foundation, thinks that both sides are guilty of obstructing the realization of the Odesa-Brody-Plotsk project. According to this expert, Warsaw wants to obtain guarantees from Kyiv that this pipeline will be an alternative to the existing pipelines, not a supplement.

Such Polish fears are due to the reverse mode of the Odesa- Brody pipeline, Honchar emphasized. On its part, Kyiv expects that the Polish side will acknowledge the 2002 memoranda between Transnafta and the two leading Polish oil processing companies, which concern the importation and transit of approximately seven million tons of Caspian oil a year via Poland. Both this and the signing of a new intergovernmental agreement between Ukraine and Poland may give a real push to carrying out the Odesa-Brody-Plotsk pipeline line, Honchar said.