UKRAINE TO JOIN WORLD SPACE TECHNOLOGY GROUP. Aleksandr Negoda, the head of the Ukrainian Space Agency, said on 9 March that Ukraine will join the Missile Technology Control Regime, dpa reported. He said that move will establish Ukraine as a world leader in producing and exporting space technology. The group coordinates exports among member countries with the goal of preventing the proliferation of missiles capable of carrying warheads. Ukraine inherited one of the largest rocket manufacturing programs in the world when the Soviet Union collapsed. PB

UKRAINIAN FOREIGN MINISTER IN PRAGUE. Hennady Udovenko and his Czech counterpart, Jaroslav Sedivy, met on 9 March in Prague and discussed economic cooperation between their countries. Udovenko told journalists later that the two states can "fruitfully cooperate in areas such as nuclear power engineering, machine-building, transportation, and space technologies."' He said he is satisfied with the "large trade turnover" of the two countries but worried about the possibility of a Czech decision to re-introduce visa requirements for non-EU citizens. Sedivy said a decision on Ukrainian citizens is "still pending," CTK and ITAR-TASS reported. MS

UKRAINIAN DEFENSE MINISTER IN HUNGARY. Oleksander Kuzmuk told his Hungarian counterpart, Gyorgy Keleti, on 9 March in Budapest that he hopes Ukrainian-Hungarian military cooperation will lead to the setting up of a joint peace-keeping force modeled on the Polish-Ukrainian unit. He also told Keleti that one of the "basic principles" of Ukrainian foreign policy is to join European institutions. In response to a journalist's question, Kuzmuk said Ukraine was the first country in the world to voluntarily renounce nuclear weapons and is therefore entitled to demand that no nuclear weapons be stationed on its neighbors' territory, Hungarian media reported. MS