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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

UKRAINIAN "MULTIVECTORISM" CONTINUES TO WAFFLE

27 April, 1999 - 00:00

By Viktor ZAMYATIN, The Day

Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma stated that the Ukrainian and Russian
positions on settling the Yugoslavia conflict fully coincide, Interfax
reports.

This statement resulted from Leonid Kuchma's "very fruitful" discussions
with Russian presidential special envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin on Wednesday
night. This means there were no apparent differences between the more or
less calm reaction by Kyiv and the saber-rattling hysteria in Moscow. And
somebody in the Ukrainian top leadership will have quite a headache explaining
to foreign counterparts that in fact President Kuchma meant the need for
an early cessation of the war, a start negotiations, and preservation of
Yugoslavia's territorial integrity.

It could quite well be that Russia, after letting off steam by the stern
and emotional statements of its Foreign Minister and generals and its much-publicized
breakup with NATO and expulsion of the NATO information center staff from
Moscow, has now calmed down a bit and changed direction. Perhaps the point
was the possible continuation of IMF and World Bank credit to Russia. Or
perhaps Mr. Chernomyrdin merely has the gift of persuasion. And from now
on, Ukraine will also be sending her ships to the Adriatic and makeing
statements about possible military and technical aid to Yugoslavia. The
two parties are reported to have agreed on coordinating their further peacemaking
efforts. However, nothing has been reported about whether Mr. Chernomyrdin
said anything about Moscow's support of the conflict settlement plan Mr.
Kuchma submitted recently to the UN and OSCE. Nor has anything been said
about how Mr. Chernomyrdin appraised Ukraine's readiness to send Kosovo
to a peacekeeping contingent as part of non-NATO forces. Nothing is being
reported about Moscow's and Kyiv's attitude toward the readiness of Azerbaijan
(Mr. Chernomyrdin is quite a traveler of late) to send to Kosovo its own
platoon as part of a Turkish contingent, as well as about what the two
presidents' think of Eduard Shevardnadze's reasoning that "NATO, of course,
threw a tantrum, but Milosevic is far from an angel himself." Thus, Georgia
and Azerbaijan are not afraid, for some reason, to say that their position
is somewhat different from that of Russia.

Still more interesting seems the statement Mr. Chernomyrdin's spokesman
Valentin Sergeyev made about the Chernomyrdin-Kuchma talks: the closeness
of positions is an unexpected proof of the viability of the CIS and the
unity of states within its framework. Hence, Mr. Chernomyrdin also acts
as a unifier after the abortive attempts by Nursultan Nazarbayev, Alyaksandr
Lukashenka, and Boris Berezovsky - all the more reason for Mr. Chernomyrdin's
aide did not comment on the real reasons for his boss's visit to Kyiv.

 

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