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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

Ukraine-Yugoslavia: Awaiting the First Step

16 January, 2001 - 00:00

President Leonid Kuchma’s visit to Yugoslavia coincided with the investigation currently conducted in many European countries concerning the use of depleted uranium ammunition by NATO air forces during the 1999 air war against Yugoslavia. Incidentally, the personnel of the Ukrainian battalion in Kosovo, which President Kuchma visited on January 9, is now undergoing checkups for precisely this reason. On the whole, the fact that during his first voyage this year Kuchma visited Yugoslavia, where he has held a meeting with Polish President Aleksander Kwa л sniewski, and made acquaintance with new Yugoslav President Vojislav Ko я stunica, can be seen as a good omen. At any rate, a sign of Kyiv’s attention to the region where its interests lie and have always lain, and where Ukrainian presence would be only logical. As Interfax-Ukraine states, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk reported to the President that they had not detected any case of exceeded marginal radiation standards at the location of Ukrainian peacekeepers in Kosovo. During his meeting with the Ukrainian part of the KFOR’s Ukrainian-Polish peacekeeping battalion deployed in the Kosovo village of Brezovica, the president said that in his opinion the use of weapons containing depleted uranium should be abandoned, the way antipersonnel mines have been. “The world will make the right conclusion for this problem,” the President was quoted as saying by Interfax-Ukraine.

Perhaps such a position by Ukraine as well as its refraining from supporting the NATO air strikes in the past has helped Kuchma find a common language with the new Yugoslav government.

President Kuchma had quite a tightly scheduled junket in Yugoslavia: he visited the Ukrainian-Polish peacekeeping battalion (in photo), Polish President Aleksander Kwa л s niewski, and the new Yugoslav leader Vojislav Ko я s tunica. It is symbolic that Mr. Kuchma should be paying his first visit this year to the URY. “The visit portends the deepening of our relations, and we have drawn up a list of areas in which we will make a special effort,” Mr. Ko я s tunica said after the conversation with his Ukrainian colleague. Among these areas, the Yugoslav president singled out economic cooperation, resumption of navigation on the Danube, clearing the Danube riverbed, and cooperation within the framework of the Danube Commission. According to Mr. Ko я s tunica, the negotiations were crowned by the signing of two “very important” agreements: on scientific and technological cooperation and on mutual investment-protection assistance. Mr. Ko я s tunica also said he had accepted Mr. Kuchma’s invitation to visit Ukraine.

By Viktor ZAMYATIN, The Day
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