[Ohio UZO News] FT; WSJ; WP; EDM; FT; IHT; OSCE

[Deychak, Orest]

Financial Times

Nato tells Putin to keep calm at summit

By James Blitz in Brussels

Published: March 28 2008 

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato's secretary-general, has warned Vladimir
Putin that next week's annual summit of the 26-member alliance must not
be marked by a another display from the Russian president of "unhelpful
rhetoric" directed at the west.

As the alliance members' heads of government prepare to meet in
Bucharest, tensions between Nato and Russia are running high because of
Washington's insistence that Ukraine and Georgia should be allowed to
take a major new step towards joining the organisation.

But while the secretary-general said he was looking forward to frank
exchanges between Mr Putin and alliance leaders at a session of the
Nato-Russia Council - the first to be held at summit level - he said he
hoped the discussion would also be constructive.

"The volume of music we get next week will to a large extent depend on
the tone that President Putin uses in the NRC," Mr de Hoop Scheffer told
the Financial Times in an interview. "I do not know what that tone will
be." However, he expressed his hope that Mr Putin, who will be attending
a Nato summit for the first time, would not use the occasion to unveil
another blunt threat to the west.

He said: "Let's try to avoid unhelpful rhetoric, like 'We will target
missiles on nations A, B and C'. That is not only unhelpful, but it
makes me remember a time when I was growing up when there was a Berlin
wall and an Iron Curtain . . . So let us refrain from rhetoric."

The summit could mark a significant moment in relations between Nato and
Russia. Although Mr Putin will be in Bucharest, the recent emergence of
Dmitry Medvedev as his successor has raised hopes in many European
states that relations between Moscow and the west may be on the mend.

Mr de Hoop Scheffer said there were signs this was happening. In recent
days, he said, there had been "hopeful, positive results" from US-Russia
talks on Washington's plans to deploy a missile defence shield in
eastern Europe, a move bitterly opposed by Moscow.

But the insistence of George W. Bush, US president, that Ukraine and
Georgia should be offered a chance to join Nato's Membership Action
Plan, an important step on the road to full membership, has left some
uncertainty about how the meeting will go.

Mr de Hoop Scheffer said he was not surprised at how hard the US was
pressing for Ukraine and Georgia to join the MAP.

"I know President Bush well and I know he is committed to giving as many
nations as possible the right to enjoy what he and I consider basic
human values and to defend those values."

However, he acknowledged it was far from clear whether the US could
persuade Nato members such as Germany that an offer of the MAP to the
two former Soviet republics would be acceptable to Mr Medvedev. "This is
what the allies are going to discuss next week," he said.

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NATO Expansion Should Continue 

By Donald Rumsfeld 

28 March 2008

A13

Next week Romania's capital of Bucharest will host representatives from
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 26 member nations. There the
alliance will make critical choices about its mission in Afghanistan and
expanding to several former Soviet-bloc nations. These decisions need
not and should not be further delayed for yet more "meetings" and
"consultations" in capitals across Europe. 

Today NATO needs clarity of purpose. A display of timidity in Bucharest
could derail its recent progress in adjusting to the demands of the
still new 21st century. Moving decisively beyond NATO's traditional
mindset is a strategic imperative if the alliance is to remain relevant
to the challenges it is likely to face. 

There is no better way for NATO to move forward than by extending full
membership invitations to Albania, Croatia and Macedonia and by
beginning the process to bring Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance in
the future through membership action plans (MAPs). At a time when
European commitments to the NATO mission in Afghanistan are being
questioned, the determination of Albania, Croatia and Macedonia to
contribute to tough missions is clear. Collectively, the three Balkan
nations have more than 650 troops currently serving in Afghanistan and
Iraq. 

At the moment Croatia has more than 200 troops training the Afghan
National Army and serving in Provincial Reconstruction Teams. A company
of Macedonian troops leads the mission of defending NATO's International
Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan. In
addition to its continuous troop presence in Afghanistan since 2002,
Albania was among the first nations to deploy to Iraq in 2003. Five
years later, Albania intends to be among the last to leave. As the
Albanian military commander in Mosul, Iraq, recently said, "We'll be
here as long as the Americans are." 

As was the case with NATO invitations to other former Soviet-bloc
nations in 1999 and 2004, this year's expansion would consolidate
democratic and economic gains in Southeast Europe. The region's
trajectory toward free political institutions and free markets is
unmistakable. 

For the past several years under membership action plans, the
governments of Albania, Croatia and Macedonia have been preparing to
join the ranks of NATO. They now meet the necessary criteria for
membership. They have shown their commitment to human rights and
regional stability by protecting the rights of ethnic minorities. They
have allocated a greater percentage of their GDP to defense expenditures
than most NATO countries in Western Europe, and they have built sound
defense capabilities in intelligence, medical support, and special
operations. 

Perhaps most important in light of NATO's demonstrated shortcomings,
Albania, Croatia and Macedonia have made use of those capabilities in
Afghanistan and Iraq by taking on the tough missions that several
current NATO members have been unwilling to carry out. Albania, Croatia
and Macedonia are certainly not large geographically, but the
operational -- and attitudinal -- contributions they bring to NATO will
far outstrip their size. 

With respect to Georgia and Ukraine, both nations are democratic,
politically mature, relatively stable and committed to the international
community after the Orange and Rose revolutions in 2003 and 2004.
Neighboring Russia recently suggested it might turn its nuclear arsenal
on Ukraine or incite civil disorder in Georgia if either takes steps to
join NATO. Undeterred, the Georgian and Ukrainian governments have
expressed their clear desire to initiate membership action plan
proceedings. 

Silence on the issue of Georgia and Ukraine in Bucharest -- including
postponement of MAPs, as some Western European governments seem to be
suggesting -- would amount to a rejection of Georgia's and Ukraine's
international aspirations. It would prove disillusioning to their
people, and it would serve as a green light to Russia to continue the
tired rhetoric of the Cold War. 

The administration, bipartisan majorities in Congress, and most members
of NATO have expressed support for extending membership to nations in
Southeastern Europe and for partnerships with those nations beyond. Why
then the hold up? Aside from Russia's opposition, Greece has threatened
to issue a sole veto over Macedonia's entry because Macedonia refuses to
change its country name. The future of the trans-Atlantic alliance --
and its credibility as the pre-eminent political and military instrument
of the world's democracies -- are too important to be constrained by
narrow disputes over semantics or to intimidation tactics more befitting
the last century. 

A larger, reinvigorated alliance, with three new members and two
potential members, would augment NATO with countries that have a proven
track record of not only recognizing today's challenges but also of
consistently contributing to the alliance's efforts to promote and
protect its interests. Expansion would bring operational expertise and a
spirit of cooperation to an alliance in need of both. All five nations
would also bring to NATO an appreciation for the vigilance required to
defend liberty. With their peoples' first hand experience of Communist
occupation, they see in Islamic extremism the dangers of an all too
familiar totalitarian ideology. 

NATO's mission in Afghanistan, thousands of miles from the European
continent, has been an historic step toward transforming NATO to meet
new challenges of the 21st century. But its work there has laid bare
some hard truths about the state of the alliance. 

Restrictive national caveats imposed by some member nations currently
prevent their contingents from engaging in combat, causing other NATO
and non-NATO members of the coalition -- such as those being considered
for membership currently -- to carry a disproportionate burden of the
alliance's work and sacrifice. Outdated rules of engagement, uneven
national commitments, and a lack of sufficient urgency among several of
its members are indisputable facts. And so too are the possibilities of
failure and creeping irrelevance if NATO does not act wisely in
Bucharest. 

Expanding NATO to Albania, Croatia and Macedonia and building closer
partnerships with Georgia and Ukraine would help to assuage any concerns
that the alliance no longer has the collective grit for the tough work
necessary to overcome the challenges in Afghanistan. All five non-NATO
nations currently under consideration -- in contrast with several full
NATO members -- have demonstrated willingness to accept NATO
responsibilities. 

Albania, Croatia and Macedonia are today ready to accept those
responsibilities. Georgia and Ukraine will likely be ready to accept
NATO responsibilities in the coming years if issued membership action
plans next week. The Bucharest summit presents an opportunity to advance
the interests of all 26 member nations by expanding the NATO alliance.
Now is not a time for self-doubt. It is a time for U.S. and European
leadership. 

--- 

Mr. Rumsfeld was U.S. ambassador to NATO from 1973 to 1974 and was the
13th and 21st U.S. secretary of Defense.

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NATO's Middling Agenda 

Jim Hoagland 

28 March 2008

FINAL

A19

A divided NATO will not extend a blueprint for eventual membership to
Ukraine and Georgia at the alliance's summit in Bucharest next week.
Instead, that gathering will focus on increasing European troop totals
in Afghanistan and discussing a bold proposal by President Bush to link
U.S., NATO and Russian missile defense systems within a single
cooperative network. 

Bush signaled these middling outcomes for the summit, which once loomed
as a diplomatic train wreck, with his announcement Wednesday that he
will visit President Vladimir Putin at the Russian resort of Sochi on
April 6 -- one month before Putin formally leaves office. 

Putin and Bush opt to finish out their intensely personal relationship
as presidents in the soft glow of mutual legacy-burnishing rather than
the glare of a clash over future NATO expansion and U.S. missile
deployments in Europe. They will leave relations between the White House
and the Kremlin mired in a rare soggy middle ground of extended
ambivalence. 

In private communications this month, the two leaders have dangled
carrots in front of each other so they could go out not with a bang but
a congratulatory back pat. Bush initiated this high-level diplomacy with
a call to Putin on March 7, followed by a warm March 12 personal letter
sent through the Russian Embassy here. 

These contacts cleared the way for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to deliver to Putin an eight-page
"Strategic Framework Declaration" the following week in Moscow. That
document contains a sweeping offer to the Russians to participate in
existing U.S. and NATO missile defenses and in the development of future
defensive technology. 

Putin was intrigued, though the Russians still have not engaged in
serious discussion on the U.S. proposals. For his part, the Russian
leader brought up Sochi. But his original invitation came with strings
attached, according to diplomats briefed on it two weeks ago. Putin,
they concluded, was saying that a confrontation in the Romanian capital
over Ukraine and Georgia would doom a Black Sea bilateral visit. 

Both Putin and Bush were taken off the hook, however, by Germany's
stubborn opposition to U.S. efforts to issue membership action plans to
the two former Soviet republics at the April 2-4 NATO summit. Chancellor
Angela Merkel bluntly told Putin in a lengthy conversation in Moscow on
March 8 that Berlin would in any event block the U.S. effort, according
to a variety of diplomatic sources. 

That freed Putin to confirm arrangements for Sochi. And it allows Bush
to start next week's trip to Europe in Kiev, where he will say -- on
Tuesday -- that he is still fighting to clear a path for Ukraine and
Georgia to join the alliance. It is an impasse with something for
everyone, especially Merkel, who has escaped criticism from Washington
for scuttling Bush's push. 

That does not mean that the Bucharest summitry will not be enlivened by
other serious issues and at least one moment of comic relief. 

France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, will announce that he will send a
fresh battalion of at least 600 troops -- with equipment -- into
Afghanistan's battleground zones. This will relieve the pressure on
Canadian units that have been taking high casualties in areas where some
other NATO countries refuse to deploy. 

Sarkozy's contribution, plus smaller new deployments by other European
nations, will enable Prime Minister Stephen Harper to argue to a restive
Parliament that Canada should continue fighting in Afghanistan now that
its allies are taking on more responsibility. 

The summit will also issue a vision paper on Afghanistan intended "to
explain to the man on the street that we know what we are doing there,"
says a NATO diplomat. It will in fact try to bridge the gap between U.S.
reliance on counterinsurgency warfare and the belief of Germany and
other European countries that reconstruction and development are
actually hampered by foreign forces engaging in offensive actions. 

A less weighty conflict that will be resolved at the last minute in
Bucharest pits France against Germany in a battle over next year's 60th
anniversary alliance summit. An agreement that the two nations would
co-host the meeting on the banks of the Rhine has fallen apart under
Germany's insistence on holding it in Berlin. France, which is expected
to rejoin NATO's integrated military command at the 2009 meeting,
continues to argue for the original idea. 

It marks progress in human affairs when France and Germany are arguing
over ceremonial honors, not land or weapons. The successors of Bush and
Putin should be so lucky. 

Eurasia Daily Monitor

March 28, 2008

MORTGAGING UKRAINE'S FUTURE SECURITY TO PAST STEREOTYPES ABOUT NATO?
 
Russian President-elect Dmitry Medvedev is citing low popular support
for NATO membership in Ukraine as his argument against NATO approval of
a Ukrainian Membership Action Plan (MAP) at NATO's April 2-4 summit
(Interfax, Financial Times, March 26).
 
This thesis is common to the Russian and German governments. While
Moscow is adding direct threats to Ukraine in this context (see EDM,
March 24), Berlin more elegantly refers to Ukrainian public opinion
polls.
 
Chancellor Angela Merkel has invoked this argument in rebuffing a
personal appeal to her from U.S. President George W. Bush by
video-conference. Bush was seeking support for Ukrainian and Georgian
MAPs at the upcoming summit (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt,
March 28).
 
Merkel's argument obscures the difference between NATO membership as
such and the membership action plan (MAP) that the Ukrainian state
leadership is requesting from NATO. While prospective membership has low
popularity in Ukraine, cooperation with NATO is ongoing and there is no
evidence of spontaneous public opposition to upgrading that cooperation
to a MAP.
 
Ukrainian membership is not on the agenda at this stage. The German
government seems to be raising the specter of actual Ukrainian
membership only to block Ukraine's rather long path toward membership
from this early stage.
 
Merkel and other German officials also profess concern that a MAP
approved during the tenure of Tymoshenko and President Viktor Yushchenko
might subsequently be canceled, if former prime minister Viktor
Yanukovych's Party of Regions returns to power in Kyiv. This concern
seems not only hypothetical, but also insufficiently attuned to the
antecedents and ongoing developments regarding this issue in Ukraine.
 
During their first tenure in power in 2002-2004, Yanukovych and the
Party of Regions supported Ukraine's close relations with NATO, which
then-president Leonid Kuchma and his National Security and Defense
Council were actively promoting. NATO membership was an official goal of
Ukraine, enshrined in basic documents on national security and military
doctrine during that period.
 
The Regions-led government had inherited and carried forward the
NATO-Ukraine Distinctive Partnership Charter, signed in 1997 and
involving close political consultations between Ukraine and the
Alliance. At NATO's Prague summit in November 2002, Ukraine received an
Action Plan, envisaging ambitious security-sector and military reforms,
and which remains valid and operative to date. The Action Plan is a
framework document, from which an annual Target Plan of reform is being
drawn up every year.
 
An Action Plan differs from a MAP only in degree. Apart from the word
"membership," the main difference is that the Action Plan entails reform
commitments by the recipient country - in this case Ukraine; whereas a
MAP involves mutual commitments by the recipient country and the
Alliance to achieve the reform goals envisaged. The implementation of
MAPs is monitored by NATO more actively and more closely with aspirant
countries, than is the case with the implementation of Action Plans.
 
In 2004 at NATO's Istanbul summit, however, Ukraine's confused internal
political situation caused the Alliance to put its hitherto close
relations with Ukraine on hold.
 
Following the Orange regime change, NATO upgraded its relationship with
Ukraine to that of an Intensified Dialogue in 2005. Meanwhile, the Party
of Regions turned the issue of Ukraine-NATO relations into a tool in the
struggle for political power. The Yanukovych camp raised the NATO
specter from time to time in order to energize supporters in eastern
Ukraine against the Orange authorities. The Party of Regions resorted to
this tactic when the political stakes in the country were rising over
issues bearing little if any relation to NATO. In so doing it exploited
Soviet-bequeathed negative stereotypes about NATO and the United States
among the population, particularly in the party's eastern Ukrainian
political strongholds.
 
>From late January until March 6, 2008, the Party of Regions and its
communist allies again used this issue as a pressure lever, blocking the
activities of the Verkhovna Rada. The party was mainly seeking to
sabotage the newly installed Yulia Tymoshenko government and derail the
parliamentary coalition of the Yushchenko-led Our Ukraine with the Yulia
Tymoshenko Bloc.
 
On March 6, however, the Party of Regions made a deal with the governing
coalition to resume the Verkhovna Rada's normal functioning. Under a
parliamentary resolution enacted that day, any future international
agreement regarding Ukraine's accession to NATO membership would have to
be submitted to a national referendum, which could also be called at
public initiative (EDM, February 14, March 12).
 
This enactment adds to the already existing basis for a
lowest-common-denominator consensus among political forces on this
issue. In essence it reaffirms a common stance that was first reached
during the Yushchenko-Yanukovych coalition negotiations in August 2006,
requiring approval by national referendum of any possible future
decision on joining NATO. In practice, the March 6 agreement makes it
possible for Ukraine to pursue close relations with NATO, including a
MAP, during the years ahead; and during those years it can take overdue
measures to educate public opinion about NATO (Den, March 15).
 
The Czech Republic and Slovakia had also recorded low popular approval
of NATO membership during the pre-accession years in the 1990s. However,
information programs by the Czech and Slovak governments and NGOs
successfully educated the public, ensuring substantial public support
for NATO by the time of those countries' accession to the alliance.
 
In the run-up to the NATO summit, the Ukrainian government and National
Security and Defense Council have adopted decisions to launch and
finance such programs in the country. But NATO could discourage such an
effort before it even starts, if Allies bow to Germany and block
Ukraine's MAP. This would mean holding Ukraine's and NATO's own
prospects hostage to Soviet-era negative stereotypes about NATO in parts
of Ukraine, perpetuated by the Kremlin's anti-NATO propaganda in that
country.
 

--Vladimir Socor

Financial Times

Gazprom chief casts doubt on Kiev gas agreement

By Lionel Barber, Catherine Belton and Neil Buckley in,Moscow 

Published: March 28 2008 

The intermediary at the heart of the strategically sensitive gas trade
between Russia and Ukraine will remain in place for now, according to
the man in charge of exports at Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled
energy group.

In remarks that cast doubt on a recent deal between Moscow and Kiev over
a dispute that threatened gas supplies to Europe, Alexander Medvedev,
Gazprom's deputy chief executive, said the group had long-term contracts
under international law with Rosukrenergo, the Swiss-based trader, and
therefore could not immediately cut it out of the trade.

"We are not finished with Rosukrenergo. You see we have a system of
long-term contracts with Rosukrenergo in international legislation," he
told the Financial Times in an interview. "We are now working very
carefully not to be in breach of the contract signed."

Yuri Prodan, Ukraine's energy minister, this week confirmed that Russia
had proposed Rosukrenergo stay on as an intermediary

In negotiations ahead of the deal struck this month between Moscow and
Kiev, Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's prime minister, insisted Rosukrenergo,
which is 50 per cent owned by Gazprom and 50 per cent owned by two
Ukrainian businessmen, be removed as an intermediary, saying the company
posed a threat to European energy security due to its opaque ownership
structure.

Critics say Rosukrenergo is a vehicle for siphoning off profits from the
gas trade. But Mr Medvedev insisted the trader had "always been
transparent from our side".

The dispute with Ukraine over contracts and unpaid debts was simply
about enforcing a transition to market-based rules and prices as part of
a move towards a free market, he insisted.

"It was not an instrument of threat," he said of the cuts. "It was in
accordance with a very simple situation: no payments for our gas, no
contracts and no schedule of repayment."

Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which have long sold gas at
regulated prices, recently told Gazprom they would charge "European
prices" from next year. That could lead to another big price rise for
Ukraine, which gets much of its gas, via Gazprom, from the central Asian
republics.

For remainder of article, see 
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2923096c-fc68-11dc-9229-000077b07658.html

 

  <http://www.iht.com> 

 

The hollowing of a hero 

By Nina L. Khrushcheva

Thursday, March 27, 2008 

MOSCOW: 

Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko never fails to disappoint.

Of course, most successful revolutionaries are later regarded as
disappointments, even failures, in one way or another. That's the nature
of revolutionary euphoria once it deflates. Yet even in such company,
Yushchenko stands out.

America, despairing of Yushchenko's endless dithering and willingness to
compromise Ukraine's independence from Russia, abandoned its support for
him over a year ago. Recently, the European Union foreign policy chief,
Javier Solana, in a brutal session with Yushchenko in Brussels, let him
know that the EU, too, had had enough of his temporizing and political
machinations.

Neither message, however, appears to have had any effect on Yushchenko,
whose only concern nowadays is his own political survival. Thus, he is
focused on reaching a deal with his former, pro-Russian opponents to
secure a second term as Ukraine's president in 2010 rather than on
opinion in the West or among his supporters.

Indeed, it now seems clear that Yushchenko was only a reluctant leader
of a democratic revolution. From the moment of his victory in 2005, he
sought to distance himself from those who supported him and, instead, to
forge an alliance with those who opposed Ukraine's democratic and
free-market transformation, preferring the crony capitalism that had
developed since Ukraine gained its independence. Now he wants to
formalize that alliance.

Yushchenko's plan is breathtakingly cynical. With his popularity ratings
having plummeted to around 10 percent, he can no longer command the
allegiance of the bulk of Our Ukraine, the party that he created but
which now (thanks to his unpopularity) is reduced to junior partner
status in the coalition government led by Prime Minister Yulia
Tymoshenko.

Instead of trying to recover support, Yushchenko and his coterie of
advisers want to link the rump of Our Ukraine that they still control
with the Orange Revolution's opponents, the Party of the Regions, which
would then dump the unelectable Viktor Yanukovich, Ukraine's erstwhile
prime minister and Yushchenko's one-time nemesis, as its standard
bearer.

Of course, there are problems with Yushchenko's plan. One big hurdle is
his support for Ukraine's NATO membership, which he is hoping to push at
the alliance's summit meeting in Bucharest next week.

Understanding that NATO is not popular in eastern Ukraine, the seat of
support for the Party of the Regions, Yushchenko has been trying to
force Tymoshenko, who has been more cautious about NATO because of its
current unpopularity, to embrace NATO membership publicly.

Even in a normal democracy, politicians who switch parties are regarded
with suspicion. Winston Churchill, for example, found "crossing the
aisle" a hard act to shake off. Moreover, Yushchenko is no Churchill,
and Ukraine is a very young democracy. To be sure, unlike Russia or
other parts of the ex-Soviet Union, Ukraine has shown itself capable of
handling the tumult of free and fair democratic elections. But is it
really ready for the type of political summersault Yushchenko is
preparing.

Moreover, Yushchenko's survival instinct will do nothing to restore his
reputation; indeed, it will likely bury it once and for all. Years of
unfulfilled promises have undermined any faith in Yushchenko's word
among most Ukrainians. Openly mocked for his dithering, he recently
issued a decree requiring his cabinet to see him off at the airport
whenever he travels. Tymoshenko acidly remarked that she is always happy
to say farewell to the president.

It is Yushchenko's rivalry with Tymoshenko that is goading him on. Her
vote total more than doubled after Yushchenko dropped her as prime
minister in 2005, and now she is leading in the polls for the
presidential election. With much of Our Ukraine now backing her,
Tymoshenko stands out as the only proven vote winner in the government
coalition.

In contrast, Yushchenko's lack of commitment to the political struggle
against the Party of the Regions gives scant credence to his belief that
the best way to defeat this party's efforts to turn back the clock in
Ukraine is to cut political deals with it.

All of this would be comic if it were not so tragic. Yushchenko regards
Tymoshenko's activism as an insult to his instinctive caution, which
goes so far as to back the continuing existence of the shadowy gas
intermediaries that have made energy security Ukraine's biggest problem.

The only question now is whether Yushchenko sees himself as politically
strong enough to sack Tymoshenko and seek to govern with the support of
his historic rivals. America and the European Union should make it clear
that so naked a political betrayal will push him permanently out of
favor in the West.

Nina L. Khrushcheva teaches international affairs at The New School in
New York and is the author of "Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and
Politics."

OSCE Project Coordinator in Ukraine

Press release

OSCE media freedom representative and partners call on Ukraine to
further development of free media

 Print version <http://www.osce.org/ukraine/?print=1>  

KYIV, 17 March 2008 - The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media,
Miklos Haraszti, and representatives for the Council of Europe and the
European Commission, called on Ukraine today to continue efforts to
create a free press and a media law in line with OSCE principles and
Council of Europe standards.

In a statement issued after an OSCE-organized High Level Policy Meeting
on media legislation reform, the representatives said that state
regulatory bodies tasked with creating a free and transparent media
environment needed to be strengthened, and that an independent public
service broadcaster needed to be created. Other recommendations included
promoting transparency in media ownership, better access to public
information and de-nationalizing mass media.

Representatives of governmental institutions regulating media policy and
responsible for media legislation reform in Ukraine, and representatives
of the country's NGO sector also participated in the meeting, which
aimed to analyze the progress made by Ukraine in bringing its
legislation into line with European standards and co-ordinate future
efforts.

"Ukraine has played an avant-garde role among the OSCE participating
States with its early reform to decriminalise defamation. I hope that
the country will continue to fulfil this pioneering role and carry out
the reform process in media legislation areas as well. The OSCE is ready
to support Ukraine in this important endeavour," Haraszti said.

For the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine, the meeting marks the
conclusion of a project that aimed to improve mass media legislation.
The Denmark-based NGO "International Media Support" helped implement the
project, which was financed by the Danish government.

Todd Becker, a Senior Project Manager at the OSCE Project Co-ordinator
in Ukraine, added that the topics discussed at the meeting had been on
the agenda for several years.

"Indeed, local as well as international experts have largely done their
job. However, the real results have been delayed due to lack of
political will in the country," he said.

For a full text of the statement from the meeting, please see this link:
http://www.osce.org/documents/pcu/2008/03/30283_en.pdf

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