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Biden meets with Ukraine president
2009-07-21
KIEV, Ukraine - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko Tuesday as part of a visit expected to reaffirm Washington's support for Kiev's pro-Western course over opposition from Moscow. Ukraine's leaders are seeking reassurances that Washington's efforts to jump-start strained relations with Moscow will not come at the expense of Kiev's drive to join NATO and integrate with the West. Moscow firmly opposes NATO membership for Ukraine and for Georgia, another pro-Western ex-Soviet republic, which Biden will visit Wednesday. Yushchenko welcomed Biden to Ukraine, calling it a "European country where democracy rules," a veiled dig at neighboring Russia. "We are going forward, we have chosen a European path," Yushchenko told Biden at the start of the meeting. "There is a lot of homework to do, because sometimes it is very difficult." Reporters were ushered out of the meeting room in the presidential residence in Kiev before Biden began to speak. Biden will meet Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko later Tuesday as well as key opposition leaders, who all plan to participate in January's presidential elections. Yushchenko and Tymoshenko -- though allies in the 2004 Orange Revolution that brought Yushchenko to power -- are now bitter foes after falling out over a number of issues. Their rivalry has prevented an effective response to the global economic crisis. That has allowed Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-backed presidential candidate who lost in the contested 2004 election and who enjoys huge popularity in the Russian-dominant east of the country, to come back into the running for the January vote. Biden is also set to meet with Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the reformist former parliament speaker, who also plans to run. Russia, meanwhile, is watching Biden's visit to its former Soviet backyard with keen interest, suspicious that Washington is out to block any moves in Ukraine and Georgia back toward dependence on Moscow, their former Soviet provider. But the U.S. has repeatedly denied that it seeks to dictate who should rule in any democratic country, and Antony J. Blinken, Biden's national security adviser, said in a conference call last week that "sovereign democracies have the right to ... choose their own partnerships and alliances." An article in Tuesday's influential Russian newspaper Kommersant said one of Biden's potential aims was to persuade both Yushchenko and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who both face considerable popular opposition, to resign. Saakashvili has vowed to see through his term, which ends in 2013. But the opposition has demanded his resignation, accusing him of launching an unwinable war against Russia in August. After the Russian army repelled a Georgian attack on the breakaway province of South Ossetia in an attempt to bring the province back under Tbilisi's control, thousands of Russian troops remain in South Ossetia and another separatist-held enclave, Abkhazia. Most of the international observers who had monitored a cease-fire along Georgia's de facto borders with the two regions had to leave after Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution extending their mandate. About 240 EU monitors remain. Washington said it did not support Georgia's attempt to retake South Ossetia by force. Saakashvili, who had committed thousands of troops for U.S.-led missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, pleaded for military support from Washington during the fighting. But the U.S. did not intervene. Georgian officials hope Washington will commit U.S. observers to join the EU mission. ___ Associated Press writer David Nowak in Moscow contributed to this report.
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