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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Senator Lugar Says Forget About Conversion!

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Official Kyiv had expected visiting US Senator Richard Lugar to state his support of the IMF loan for Ukraine and he did. Senator Lugar assured President Kuchma that Congress would support the project, adding that Washington would also support Caucasian oil transport to Europe via Ukraine proceeding from Ukraine’s geographical position and its friendly ties with Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Poland. In other words, Ukrainian-US problems arising under the Nunn-Lugar nuclear disarmament program were left in the background.

At a roundtable with the Ukrainian media Senator Lugar declared that Ukrainian disarmament did not present any particular problems and that everything was going according to schedule, except that for reasons best known to themselves President Leonid Kuchma, NDSC Chairman Volodymyr Horbulin, and Parliamentary Defense Commission Chairman Heorhy Kriuchkov joined in a choir accusing the United States of not paying serious enough attention to the problem of land reclamation after removing missile launch facilities (e.g., only 20-25 out of 60 such sites were actually reclaimed).

Lugar did not comment much on conversion projects, saying that building new plants was better economically than converting military facilities and thus Ukraine should pay more attention to improving its investment climate and less to converting its military-industrial complex.

The US Senator also finally buried all hopes for Volodymyr Horbulin’s idea of converting SS-24 missiles to commercial use. He affirmed that the decision on their destruction was made in December 1997 and there was no use trying to revise the matter.

After voicing his approval of the President’s latest series of edicts, Mr. Lugar departed on his way to Baku, Tbilisi, and Ankara, leaving Kyiv somewhat dubious about its being able to make decisions independently.

 

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