NATO Chief Hails Ukraine Bid to Join Alliance

From DefenseNews

NATO Chief Hails Ukraine’s Bid To Join Alliance

By YANA DLUGY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, KIEV

NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer hailed June 27 the commitment of this former Soviet republic’s new leadership to joining the alliance.

”I’m here in a new and changed Ukraine and it gives me... a lot of pleasure knowing the ambition of the Ukrainian government for Euro-Atlantic integration,” Scheffer said at a press conference in Kiev, where he was on a one-day visit.

”The process... is very much supported by the 26 NATO allies,” the NATO secretary general told reporters after talks with Ukraine Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk.

”On the road to NATO many reforms are necessary and I know the Ukrainian government has embarked on the road to reform and the NATO allies... will assist Ukraine wherever it is asked and wherever it is necessary,” he said.

Scheffer was later due to meet with President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Defense Minister Anatoly Grytsenko and other senior officials in parliament and government.

Topping the agenda at the talks on June 27 was progress on reforms that Yushchenko’s administration has undertaken to make as part of its drive for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

Yushchenko’s pro-Western leadership was swept to power at elections last year after a popular revolution against the previous pro-Moscow administration.

His inauguration invigorated ties between the 26-member alliance and Kiev.

Yushchenko has reinstated the objective of joining NATO as part of Ukraine’s military policy. At an informal meeting earlier this year in Vilnius, NATO foreign ministers agreed on a three-page package of “short-term actions” designed to help Kiev carry out reforms needed to deepen ties with the alliance.

Ukraine has long been a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program with former Communist states. But Yushchenko’s hopes of actually joining NATO -- the West’s Cold War-era military bloc -- face major obstacles.

For one, most Ukrainians oppose their country joining the alliance -- a May opinion survey showed that 55.7 percent of the population were against it, up from 48 percent in February.

Scheffer sought to allay such concerns on June 27 by saying that NATO’s focus has shifted drastically since its founding during the Cold War.

”When I speak about a new Ukraine, there is also a new NATO... it is a different NATO than the NATO of the Cold War, it is a NATO that is running and being responsible for peacekeeping operations in many parts of the world,” he said.

Another obstacle to Kiev’s NATO plans is opposition from Russia, Ukraine’s traditional powerbroker that today supplies it with most of its energy needs. Russia frowns on Ukraine’s NATO ambitions as it would enlarge the alliance’s borders with Russia and could remove a major parts supplier to the Russian military.

NATO membership would have a serious effect on Ukraine’s defense industry which sells much of its production to Moscow. Kiev supplies engines for Russian helicopters, gas turbines for Russian ships, parts for Russian anti-aircraft systems and Russian military satellites are sent into orbit on Ukrainian rocket launchers.