1_January 6, 2002 - The Ukrainian Weekly

22 THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2002
No. 1
2001: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
12 million Ukrainians live abroad, dispersed across the
globe for various reasons, including economic and
political ones. He said they should be encouraged to
return home or at least maintain ties with their historic
homeland. It is probable that the bill, which cannot be
resubmitted to the legislative body until its next session,
will be reworked and reintroduced.
In October a precedent-setting verdict was passed by
Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court in a case over
property confiscated by the state in 1949 from Maria
Hladyk, a Lemko who was forcibly resettled in 1947
from her home to a village in Poland. This verdict
admits that the nationalization of Lemko properties 50
years ago was illegal and paves the way for other
Lemkos, or their heirs to regain what was confiscated
from them by the Communist authorities. Polish courts
are currently going over some 200 lawsuits by Lemkos
seeking to have their properties returned to them.
Finally, the compensation deadline for Nazi-era slave
laborers was extended from August 11 to December 31
of this year. During World War II, many Eastern
Europeans were taken from their homelands by the Nazi
regime to Germany and were forced to work in camps
and factories. Last year the German Parliament voted to
allocate funds to compensate the slave and forced laborers,
who are found worldwide. The compensatory funds
are supplied partly by the German government and partly
by the corporations that participated in the forced
labor program over 50 years ago. Most claimants are
now between 70 and 90 years old.
U.S.-Ukraine relations:
signs of dissatisfaction
The year 2001 had many indications of an improving
U.S.-Ukraine relationship: Ukraine joined in the
U.S. fight against international terrorism, improved
its economy, maintained its security and other ties with the
United States and NATO, and exchanged senior-level visits
with its trans-Atlantic strategic partner.
But the relationship was also dogged by a number of irritants:
the unsolved, suspicious murder of muckraking journalist
Heorhii Gongadze, allegations of pervasive high-level
corruption, and the apparent official unwillingness to curb
the large-scale production of pirated Western optical media
products.
These irritants simply would not go away, and, as a
result, the bilateral relationship ended the year with a notso-very-merry
Christmas – Ukraine got a dreaded “rizka”
(switch) instead of a present from the administration’s St.
Nick and found a smaller present than expected under the
Congressional foreign assistance Christmas tree.
After two years of pressure, threats and limited action in
its attempt to curb Ukraine’s role as Europe’s leading producer
and exporter of pirated music, video and computer
program products (CDs, CD-ROMs, DVDs, etc.) the U.S.
government finally put its foot down – on December 20 the
office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced
trade sanctions against Ukraine.
Beginning on January 23, 2002, the United States will
levy “prohibitive tariffs” on $75 million worth of metals,
footwear and other imports from Ukraine, which will offset
the amount of annual damages that this piracy of optical
media has caused to Americans, according to the announcement.
The sanctions were announced on the same day the
Verkhovna Rada again failed to pass anti-piracy legislation.
Explaining the U.S. action, Trade Representative Robert B.
Zoellick also suggested that Ukraine’s lack of action may
hurt its chances of getting into the World Trade
Organization. “We take piracy of U.S. intellectual property
seriously. So does the WTO, which Ukraine wants to join,”
he said.
The United States had placed Ukraine on the priority foreign
country watch list in March, and in August it stripped
Ukraine of its status in the Generalized System of
Preferences (GSP) which it grants developing economies.
Within days of the USTR action on sanctions, the U.S.
House of Representatives and Senate approved a compromise
foreign assistance package for fiscal year 2002, which
would give Ukraine “not less than” $154 million. While
more than the $125 million recommended by the House,
the amount is less than the $169 million requested by the
Bush administration and the $180 million that originally
passed in the Senate. It is also less than the $170 million
appropriated for Ukraine for 2001 and the $195 million it
received in 2000.
While the 2002 aid legislation directs the State
Department to report to Congress “on progress by the government
of Ukraine in investigating and bringing to justice
individuals responsible for the murders of Ukrainian journalists,”
unlike the “certification” provisions in previous
years, this year’s provision does not threaten to cut off aid if
the report is negative.
The unsolved slayings of Heorhii Gongadze, as well as
other lesser-known Ukrainian journalists reporting about
high-level corruption, and questions of press freedom in
Ukraine have been raised repeatedly throughout the year by
the Bush administration and in Congress.
The State Department’s annual Human Rights Report
cited Ukraine’s mixed record on human rights and the government’s
failure to curb institutional corruption and abuse.
Administration spokesmen periodically expressed U.S.
concerns in response to inquiries, and the U.S. position was
driven home resolutely by National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice during her visit to Kyiv on July 25. “We
hope to have good relations with Ukraine,” she told
reporters in Kyiv, “but it can only be on the basis of forward
movement on these very important issues.”
In Congress, the U.S. Helsinki Commission, which has
always taken the lead in monitoring such issues, frequently
expressed its concerns and held a special hearing on
Ukraine. The commission’s chairman, Sen. Ben Nighthorse
Campbell (R-Colo.), also introduced legislation that would
tie foreign economic assistance to corruption-fighting
efforts in countries that receive U.S. aid.
During the hearing on May 2, dubbed “Ukraine at the
Crossroads – 10 Years After Independence,” Helsinki commission
members had a chance to quiz President Leonid
Kuchma’s top national security advisor, Yevhen Marchuk,
on Ukraine’s political and economic problems, including
the tape scandal allegedly linking the president to the murder
of Mr. Gongadze and to some high-level corruption, as
well as the removal, a few days earlier, of Prime Minister
Viktor Yuschenko, who had been highly regarded in the
West as an incorruptible reformer.
Mr. Marchuk said that the tape scandal and Gongadze
affair “complicated” the political process and were being
used by the president’s opponents “to instigate the political
crisis in Ukraine.” On the other hand, he added, this societal
friction could also be seen as a “natural component of a
complex process of the maturing of the young Ukrainian
democracy.”
Mr. Marchuk also took time to underscore Ukraine’s
economic progress and positive role in international affairs
– its track record on implementing undertaken commitments
and the consistency of is foreign policy. He cited as
examples the elimination of Ukraine’s nuclear weapons, its
adherence to international arms control and non-proliferation
regimes, and the closure of the Chornobyl nuclear
power plant.
Sitting in the audience in the hearing room was the slain
journalist’s widow, Myroslava Gongadze, and their two
young daughters, who had been granted asylum in the
United States.
Maj. Mykola Melnychenko, the presidential bodyguard
who secretly recorded president Kuchma’s conversations,
had an opportunity to explain his side of the taping controversy
during a Washington news conference on August 14.
He received asylum in the United States at about the same
time as Ms. Gongadze; the U.S. action was revealed by the
State Department on April 16.
Maj. Melnychenko said he doubted that President
Kuchma would ever resign over the tape scandal. But he
was certain that sooner or later the president would be
brought to account for the killing of Mr. Gongadze and
other crimes. He denied press reports that he was helping
U.S. investigators looking into Ukrainian money-laundering
activities in the United States and that he gave them
access to the tape recordings.
Questions about the presidential tapes, the Gongadze
murder and corruption were also discussed to a greater or
lesser degree in many of the official and unofficial visits to
Washington by Ukrainian political figures in 2001.
The first such visit, at the end of February, was by
Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz, who had received
copies of some of Maj. Melnychenko’s secret tapes, played
some of them publicly and launched his movement to oust
President Kuchma. He said he came to Washington to get
acquainted with the personalities in the new Bush administration
and to give them his perspective on developments in
Ukraine.
Among other Ukrainian political figures on similar missions
to Washington at this time was former Foreign Affairs
Minister Borys Tarasyuk, who held a round of meetings at
the State Department, the National Security Council and on
Capitol Hill, but unlike Mr. Moroz, shied away from publicity
and the press.
Also making the rounds of the Washington power centers
in March was Serhii Tyhypko, another former member
of the Yuschenko Cabinet, who, also unlike Mr.
Moroz, said that absent clear evidence of the president’s
complicity to criminal activity he would back Mr.
Kuchma. Mr. Tyhypko also indicated that Prime Minister
Yuschenko needed to strengthen his government with a
broader coalition.
As it turned out, a few weeks later Mr. Yuschenko, lacking
adequate support in the Verkhovna Rada, was ousted on
a no-confidence vote. Already out of office but not out of
politics, Mr. Yuschenko came to the United States in
November as the head of a new election bloc, Our Ukraine,
which is preparing for elections to the Verkhovna Rada in
2002. While in Washington and New York, he met with
administration officials and members of Congress, business
leaders, the press and the Council of Presidents of major
Jewish organizations.
The first high-level Ukrainian official to meet with the
new administration in Washington was First Vice-Prime
Minister Yurii Yekhanurov. The primary objective of his
mid-March visit was to secure additional credits from the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank, but it also
included meetings with Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill
and other U.S. officials.
Two weeks later Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister
AP/Efrem Lukatsky
U.S. Reps. Marcy Kaptur, Curt Weldon, Bob Schaffer and Andrew Crenshaw on February 22 during a visit to
Kyiv for discussions on the current political situation in Ukraine and cooperation with the Verkhovna Rada.