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END NOTE: UKRAINE ASPIRES TO LEADERSHIP ROLE IN REVITALIZED GUUAM xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
RUSSIAN ENVIRONMENTALISTS REMEMBER CHORNOBYL. On the 19th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster in Ukraine on 26 April, Russian environmentalists held protests in various cities, such as Moscow, Kaliningrad, and Voronezh against Russia's policy of secrecy regarding the disposal of nuclear waste, RFE/RL's Yekaterinburg bureau reported. Activists from the environmental organization Ekozashchita have submitted inquiries to 14 branches of the Emergency Situations Ministry asking for information on the ministry's plans for evacuating the population in case of a radioactive accident, and ministry officials in six of the 14 cities said the information was classified. In an interview with RFE/RL's Moscow bureau, Lidiya Popova, director of the Center for Nuclear Ecology and Energy Policy, said that although a law on defending the population against radiation requires that enterprises that could be locales for a radiation accident are to keep local officials informed, such companies are not doing so. JAC
UKRAINE ASPIRES TO LEADERSHIP ROLE IN REVITALIZED GUUAM
Following Viktor Yushchenko's election late last year as Ukrainian president and Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin's espousal of an unequivocally pro-Western foreign policy orientation, many observers anticipated that the long-awaited summit of the GUUAM alignment in Chisinau on 22 April would herald a new era in that body's activities.
Speaking for the three other presidents of member states who attended the summit, Yushchenko redefined GUUAM's priorities, highlighting democratization and eventual membership of NATO and the EU. But at the same time, the discussions between participants revealed at least one major strategic disagreement.
GUUAM first evolved in 1997 as GUAM -- the brainchild of the then presidents of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine (Eduard Shevardnadze, Heidar Aliyev and Leonid Kuchma) -- on the basis of their shared pro-Western orientation, mistrust of Russia, and the desire to profit jointly from the export of at least part of Azerbaijan's Caspian oil via Georgia and Ukraine. Moldova's inclusion, formalized on the sidelines of a Council of Europe summit in Strasbourg in October 1997, resulted partly from concern over the anticipated impact of the revisions adopted in May 1997 to the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe; those amendments increased the amount of weaponry Russia is allowed to deploy in the Transcaucasus, Ukraine, and Moldova. Moldova was also interested in the TRACECA project to create a coordinated transport corridor from Central Asia via the Transcaucasus and Ukraine to Europe. In April 1999, Uzbekistan was formally accepted as a member of GUAM, but its participation has never been anything but half-hearted, and in June 2002 Tashkent "suspended" its membership until further notice.
From the organization's inception, Moscow has harbored fears and suspicions that its primary rationale is to undermine the CIS and Russia's claim to a leading role within that body. Two ongoing trends have fueled those misgivings. The first is discussions of a possible military-security component for GUUAM in the shape of either a joint peacekeeping battalion or a security force to guard the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan export pipeline for Azerbaijan's Caspian oil. (The defense ministers of the GUUAM member states have met more regularly than have the presidents.)
The second is the keen interest, and later financial support, given to GUUAM by the United States, which in late 2000 allocated $45 million to the alliance's five members to be spent as they considered appropriate. Senior officials from GUUAM member states have consistently sought to allay Moscow's concerns. For example, speaking in May 2000 in Washington, Moldovan Ambassador to Washington Ceslav Ciobanu stressed that "our organization was never designed to be oriented against any other country."
While GUUAM's members made no secret of their desire for closer cooperation with Euro-Atlantic and European structures, the advantages of closer economic cooperation were touted as the locomotive for GUUAM's development. In August 2000, Yushchenko, then Ukrainian prime minister, proposed creating a GUUAM free-trade zone. That idea was endorsed by all five presidents at a meeting in September 2000 on the sidelines of the UN Millennium Summit in New York.
In June 2001, the five GUUAM presidents met in Yalta and adopted a GUUAM charter outlining the organization's basic goals and principles, which included economic cooperation, developing transport links, strengthening regional security, and cooperating in the fight against organized crime and international terrorism. But they did not sign Yushchenko's proposed agreement on establishing the free-trade zone, which Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov termed "premature." Karimov did not attend the next summit, in Yalta in July 2002, at which the other four countries gave the green light for the free-trade zone. By that juncture, Moldova too was signaling its disenchantment with GUUAM; President Voronin was quoted by Caucasus Press on 19 July as saying GUUAM's future prospects are unclear.
The planned free-trade zone and transport corridors figured on the agenda of the next summit, in July 2003. But only two of the five presidents attended -- Karimov stayed away in line with Uzbekistan's "suspended" membership, and the presidents of Azerbaijan and Moldova were absent due to illness. And only the Ukrainian parliament ratified the agreement on establishing the free-trade zone.
For much of 2004, GUUAM appeared to have lost momentum: a summit planned for Batumi in June was postponed indefinitely for reasons that were never made clear. But GUUAM leaders did agree in September 2004 to establish an interparliamentary assembly.
Yushchenko's election as Ukrainian president, and the close convergence of geopolitical interests between Ukraine and Georgia, engendered hopes that the organization could be revitalized, with Ukraine as the largest committed member playing a leading role. On 18 April, Azerbaijani presidential-administration official Novruz Mamedov predicted that the summit would give GUUAM its "second wind," while Georgian National Security Council Secretary Gela Bezhuashvili told Caucasus Press the same day that member states have agreed to coordinate their efforts to secure membership of NATO and the EU.
Addressing this month's Chisinau GUUAM summit, President Yushchenko advocated transforming GUUAM into "a large-scale regional organization" committed to democracy, economic development, and regional security and with its own headquarters and secretariat. Although Yushchenko did not say so, the security dimension would serve to underscore the difference between GUUAM and the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization, the activities of which GUUAM might otherwise risk duplicating. "The idea is to create a coalition of states on the basis of GUUAM that would become the stronghold and guarantee of democratic reforms and stability in the Black Sea-Caspian region," Interfax quoted Yushchenko as saying -- a formulation that implies that Uzbekistan no longer figures in the equation.
Yushchenko also unveiled at the Chisinau summit a new seven-point initiative aimed at resolving the long-running Transdniester conflict. That step-by-step peace proposal would entail holding free and democratic elections in Transdniester under the aegis of the EU, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the United States, and Russia, and the replacement of the Russian peacekeeping forces in Transdniester with international military and civilian observers. Yushchenko hinted that that model might subsequently be applied to other unresolved conflicts on the territory of GUUAM member states, meaning those in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh.
But Yushchenko's peace plan failed to win the support of other participants; Romanian President Traian Basescu objected that holding elections in Transdniester under the auspices of international organizations would serve to legitimize the existing separatist regime. At the same time, Basescu called for the swift withdrawal of all Russian troops from Transdniester and expanding the current five-sided format for mediating a solution to the conflict. Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin for his part said he was not informed in advance of Yushchenko's proposal, according to the "Neue Zuercher Zeitung" on 25 April.
The presence at the Chisinau summit of both Basescu and Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus served to highlight the possibility -- to which Yushchenko alluded -- that other states might apply to join GUUAM. In the past, Romania, Bulgaria, and Latvia have also been mentioned as potential new members.
But in the final analysis, the organization's potential and future influence, and hence its attractiveness to outsiders, might depend largely on its members' success in resolving long-running territorial conflicts that will otherwise continue to drain those countries' modest economic resources.
END NOTE: UKRAINE ASPIRES TO LEADERSHIP ROLE IN REVITALIZED GUUAM xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
BELARUSIAN POLICE DISPERSE RALLY ON CHORNOBYL ANNIVERSARY. Riot police dispersed a demonstration staged by several hundreds of Belarusian opposition activists as well as youth-movement activists from Russia and Ukraine in downtown Minsk on 26 April, the 19th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, RFE/RL's Belarus Service reported. The demonstrators wanted to hand a petition to the Belarusian presidential administration requesting that the authorities report on what they are doing to solve the Chornobyl-related problems and that they stop producing food in areas contaminated by radiation. According to an official report, police arrested five Ukrainians, 14 Russians, and 13 Belarusians during the rally. JM
BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT SAYS WEST FAILED TO HELP DEAL WITH CHORNOBYL AFTERMATH. President Alyaksandr Lukashenka told journalists on 26 April in Vetka Raion of Homel Oblast, an area seriously contaminated by fallout from the 1986 Chornobyl accident, that Belarus has always dealt with post-Chornobyl problems on its own, RFE/RL's Belarus Service and Belapan reported. "The opposition was insisting that the West would help us, but the West helped no one. We knew that we would not get humanitarian aid, just like Russia and Ukraine," Lukashenka said. He added that the few people from abroad who offered help in health care and other areas were rewarded by the Belarusian government. "They [the West] promised then to give us money when the Chornobyl power plant is shut down. They have given us nothing so far. We rejected old rags and clothes, we do not need them," Lukashenka noted. "There is not a single clinic or hospital in Belarus that has not received humanitarian aid from abroad," Henadz Hrushavy, head of the For Children of Chornobyl humanitarian fund, commented to RFE/RL. "It is simply dishonest to hurl such an invective -- we don't need your old rags and clothes -- on behalf of the Belarusian people at all those who have helped Belarusians." JM
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT LISTS SUCCESSES OF FIRST 100 DAYS... President Viktor Yushchenko said at a local-government forum in Kyiv on 26 April that his government has managed to bring to fruition a majority of his election promises during its first 100 days, which elapse on 3 May, Ukrainian media reported. Yushchenko said that since his inauguration, freedom of speech and independent media have begun to become a reality in Ukraine. Second, the president claimed that the state budget has been "oriented toward the people," adding that 70 percent of the budget is being "consumed by the poorest part of the population." Third, Yushchenko noted that the first group of Ukrainian peacekeepers returned from Iraq in March, and the others will return before the end of the year. He added that the term of military service was cut to 18 months in the navy and 12 months in the land forces, also in accordance with an election pledge. Yushchenko also said Ukraine during the first 100 days of his government has signed accords on 2 billion euros' ($2.6 billion) worth of investment credits, adding that "this is more than during the past five years taken together." JM
...AND PLEDGES NOT TO DIVERGE FROM POLITICAL REFORM. President Yushchenko said at the local-government forum in Kyiv on 26 April that he will stick to the constitutional reform passed by the Verkhovna Rada in December in a package with other bills in order to resolve the election deadlock at that time (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 8 December 2004), Interfax reported. Yushchenko was commenting on a recent statement by Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz, Yushchenko's coalition partner in the government, who said that it would be inadmissible to cancel the constitutional reform. "Don't worry, Oleksandr Oleksandrovych [Moroz]," Yushchenko said. "The [relevant bills] have been passed and signed, so if Bill No. 3207-1 is not adopted now, Bill No. 4180 will take effect not on 1 September but on 1 January 2006." Under the 8 December package of agreements, the power shift in Ukraine -- from the president toward the prime minister and the parliament -- will occur on 1 September if the Verkhovna Rada approves a bill on local self-government (No. 3207) in the second reading prior to that date, or, failing such passage, the political reform (Bill No. 4180) will automatically go into effect on 1 January 2006. JM
FORMER UKRAINIAN PREMIER BLASTS GOVERNMENT FOR ECONOMIC DECLINE. Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych, who was prime minister in 2002-04, said at a meeting with EU ambassadors in Kyiv on 26 April that the Yushchenko government is sacrificing the country's economic development for temporary social benefit, Interfax reported. According to Yanukovych, the government's policies will lead to the curtailment of investment programs and a slowdown of economic growth. Yanukovych noted that the new government has failed to maintain the pace of economic development achieved in 2004, adding that "practically all macroeconomic indicators" have worsened. Yanukovych claimed that Ukrainians now have to pay three times more for food and other necessities than in 2004, while an inflation jump "has devoured the pension and wage increases that were thoughtlessly introduced by the new authorities." JM
CHIEF BANKER SAYS HRYVNYA REVALUATION BENEFITS UKRAINIANS. Ukrainian National Bank head Volodymyr Stelmakh told journalists on 27 April that last week's strengthening of the national currency, the hryvnya, against the U.S. dollar has benefited the poorest segments of Ukrainian society, Interfax reported. "The poor people gained from the hryvnya strengthening, since they do not have dollars, nor do they suffer from psychological dilemmas [connected with the hryvnya reevaluation]; second, they have preserved the purchasing power of their pensions, stipends, and the like," Stelmakh said. He also commented on benefits of the hryvnya's new exchange rate for richer Ukrainians. "Ukrainians have not lost anything," Stelmakh asserted. "Simply, they will now have to pay 505 hryvnyas for $100, not 530 hryvnyas [as before]. Their trips to Europe will be less expensive. Where do you use the U.S. dollar on the domestic market?" On 21 April, the Ukrainian National Bank set the hryvnya's exchange rate against the U.S. dollar at 5.05 hryvnyas, compared with 5.25 hryvnyas a day earlier. President of the Association of Ukrainian Banks Oleksandr Suhonyako said on 25 April that depositors of Ukrainian banks who saved their money in U.S. dollars lost 1.2 billion hryvnyas as a result of this revaluation. JM
UKRAINE ASPIRES TO LEADERSHIP ROLE IN REVITALIZED GUUAM
Following Viktor Yushchenko's election late last year as Ukrainian president and Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin's espousal of an unequivocally pro-Western foreign policy orientation, many observers anticipated that the long-awaited summit of the GUUAM alignment in Chisinau on 22 April would herald a new era in that body's activities.
Speaking for the three other presidents of member states who attended the summit, Yushchenko redefined GUUAM's priorities, highlighting democratization and eventual membership of NATO and the EU. But at the same time, the discussions between participants revealed at least one major strategic disagreement.
GUUAM first evolved in 1997 as GUAM -- the brainchild of the then presidents of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine (Eduard Shevardnadze, Heidar Aliyev and Leonid Kuchma) -- on the basis of their shared pro-Western orientation, mistrust of Russia, and the desire to profit jointly from the export of at least part of Azerbaijan's Caspian oil via Georgia and Ukraine. Moldova's inclusion, formalized on the sidelines of a Council of Europe summit in Strasbourg in October 1997, resulted partly from concern over the anticipated impact of the revisions adopted in May 1997 to the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe; those amendments increased the amount of weaponry Russia is allowed to deploy in the Transcaucasus, Ukraine, and Moldova. Moldova was also interested in the TRACECA project to create a coordinated transport corridor from Central Asia via the Transcaucasus and Ukraine to Europe. In April 1999, Uzbekistan was formally accepted as a member of GUAM, but its participation has never been anything but half-hearted, and in June 2002 Tashkent "suspended" its membership until further notice.
From the organization's inception, Moscow has harbored fears and suspicions that its primary rationale is to undermine the CIS and Russia's claim to a leading role within that body. Two ongoing trends have fueled those misgivings. The first is discussions of a possible military-security component for GUUAM in the shape of either a joint peacekeeping battalion or a security force to guard the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan export pipeline for Azerbaijan's Caspian oil. (The defense ministers of the GUUAM member states have met more regularly than have the presidents.)
The second is the keen interest, and later financial support, given to GUUAM by the United States, which in late 2000 allocated $45 million to the alliance's five members to be spent as they considered appropriate. Senior officials from GUUAM member states have consistently sought to allay Moscow's concerns. For example, speaking in May 2000 in Washington, Moldovan Ambassador to Washington Ceslav Ciobanu stressed that "our organization was never designed to be oriented against any other country."
While GUUAM's members made no secret of their desire for closer cooperation with Euro-Atlantic and European structures, the advantages of closer economic cooperation were touted as the locomotive for GUUAM's development. In August 2000, Yushchenko, then Ukrainian prime minister, proposed creating a GUUAM free-trade zone. That idea was endorsed by all five presidents at a meeting in September 2000 on the sidelines of the UN Millennium Summit in New York.
In June 2001, the five GUUAM presidents met in Yalta and adopted a GUUAM charter outlining the organization's basic goals and principles, which included economic cooperation, developing transport links, strengthening regional security, and cooperating in the fight against organized crime and international terrorism. But they did not sign Yushchenko's proposed agreement on establishing the free-trade zone, which Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov termed "premature." Karimov did not attend the next summit, in Yalta in July 2002, at which the other four countries gave the green light for the free-trade zone. By that juncture, Moldova too was signaling its disenchantment with GUUAM; President Voronin was quoted by Caucasus Press on 19 July as saying GUUAM's future prospects are unclear.
The planned free-trade zone and transport corridors figured on the agenda of the next summit, in July 2003. But only two of the five presidents attended -- Karimov stayed away in line with Uzbekistan's "suspended" membership, and the presidents of Azerbaijan and Moldova were absent due to illness. And only the Ukrainian parliament ratified the agreement on establishing the free-trade zone.
For much of 2004, GUUAM appeared to have lost momentum: a summit planned for Batumi in June was postponed indefinitely for reasons that were never made clear. But GUUAM leaders did agree in September 2004 to establish an interparliamentary assembly.
Yushchenko's election as Ukrainian president, and the close convergence of geopolitical interests between Ukraine and Georgia, engendered hopes that the organization could be revitalized, with Ukraine as the largest committed member playing a leading role. On 18 April, Azerbaijani presidential-administration official Novruz Mamedov predicted that the summit would give GUUAM its "second wind," while Georgian National Security Council Secretary Gela Bezhuashvili told Caucasus Press the same day that member states have agreed to coordinate their efforts to secure membership of NATO and the EU.
Addressing this month's Chisinau GUUAM summit, President Yushchenko advocated transforming GUUAM into "a large-scale regional organization" committed to democracy, economic development, and regional security and with its own headquarters and secretariat. Although Yushchenko did not say so, the security dimension would serve to underscore the difference between GUUAM and the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization, the activities of which GUUAM might otherwise risk duplicating. "The idea is to create a coalition of states on the basis of GUUAM that would become the stronghold and guarantee of democratic reforms and stability in the Black Sea-Caspian region," Interfax quoted Yushchenko as saying -- a formulation that implies that Uzbekistan no longer figures in the equation.
Yushchenko also unveiled at the Chisinau summit a new seven-point initiative aimed at resolving the long-running Transdniester conflict. That step-by-step peace proposal would entail holding free and democratic elections in Transdniester under the aegis of the EU, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the United States, and Russia, and the replacement of the Russian peacekeeping forces in Transdniester with international military and civilian observers. Yushchenko hinted that that model might subsequently be applied to other unresolved conflicts on the territory of GUUAM member states, meaning those in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh.
But Yushchenko's peace plan failed to win the support of other participants; Romanian President Traian Basescu objected that holding elections in Transdniester under the auspices of international organizations would serve to legitimize the existing separatist regime. At the same time, Basescu called for the swift withdrawal of all Russian troops from Transdniester and expanding the current five-sided format for mediating a solution to the conflict. Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin for his part said he was not informed in advance of Yushchenko's proposal, according to the "Neue Zuercher Zeitung" on 25 April.
The presence at the Chisinau summit of both Basescu and Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus served to highlight the possibility -- to which Yushchenko alluded -- that other states might apply to join GUUAM. In the past, Romania, Bulgaria, and Latvia have also been mentioned as potential new members.
But in the final analysis, the organization's potential and future influence, and hence its attractiveness to outsiders, might depend largely on its members' success in resolving long-running territorial conflicts that will otherwise continue to drain those countries' modest economic resources.