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Bush Welcomes Yushchenko

You can find President Bush's welcome statement to Yushchenko here on the White House website. [thanks Action Ukraine Report]

The most important bits of the speech that I can see:

Starts off like this:

Thank you. It's an honor to stand with a courageous leader of a free Ukraine. Mr. President, you are a friend to our country and you are an inspiration to all who love liberty. Welcome to America, and we're pleased to welcome your wife, as well.
and it doesn't get any less complimentary. As Kuzio says, the good days are back in US-Ukraine relations.

also:

  • Bush has asked Congress to provide $60 million in aid to with the anti-corruption, pro-civil society efforts
  • promises to work with the Ukrainian government on WTO and lift Jackson-Vanik
  • sending a US official to Ukraine to talk about energy
  • He appreciates Ukraine contribution to Iraq and thanks in advance for further support
Yushchenko's important words:

  • Repeated his talk about Ukraine's European choice
  • spoke of the difficulties in the Ukraine his government is seeking to govern
  • said nice things about helping efforts to stop proliferation of WMD
  • talked about the joint statement he and Bush had signed (here on the White House site)
  • Ukraine is looking forward to getting into WTO by the end of the year, and looking forward to US support on ending trade sanctions (read: Jackson-Vanik, again)
The most important things to take away from this, from my point of view, are:
  1. Repeated US statements have said Ukraine's eventual pull-out from Iraq is OK. The first question Bush fields from a reporter is: Why should the United States continue to pay most of the cost and suffer most of the casualties when our allies are leaving? and I would recommend reading his response. He basically says "I understand, there's no hard feelings."
  2. It is very good news that Bush so bluntly stated that Jackson-Vanik would go in his opening remarks. For those who are not familiar, it is a piece of legislation left over from the cold war era that puts trade sanctions on Ukraine. I fervently hope it will be repealed by June. The author of this article in Slate goes into detail about the amendment and why it should be repealed. The article is OK, although connecting the trade sanctions to Eastern European problems with descrimination against Jews was an odd stretch. No matter, the important point is that they should go as quickly as possible, and this looks to be happening.
  3. NATO was totally sidelined; it wasn't even mentioned in the opening remarks. Of course the reporters bring up the subject, but I give Bush points for making a big deal about the WTO and talking about NATO only when pressed. Yushchenko is trying to dance around the issue until his government can sell the idea to the public, while Ukrainians currently do not like the idea much at all. Zerkalo Nedeli found lots of talk but little action at the NATO summit Bush refers to in his response to reporters. ZN explains the quiet over NATO in this article with a Democratic Initiatives Fund poll saying 48% of Ukrainians were against membership and only 15% for.

    Therefore it was also good diplomacy that in Bush's response to the reporter, he quickly moved from talking about the importance of NATO membership to talking about how it will not conflict with eventual EU membership (which Ukrainians like a lot more). My thanks to Bush for a good bit of diplomacy.

Posted on Tuesday, April 5, 2005 at 02:32AM by Registered CommenterDan McMinn in | Comments4 Comments

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Reader Comments (4)

If Ukraine were the only Jackson-Vanik issue, I think it would be gone by now. The problem as I see it is Russia. As written, the amendment is applied to all the successor USSR states. I argued last week that since the original conditions that prompted the legislation no longer exist, then the law should go. I think some Congressmen are just using the issue as a political prop to bash Russia a bit longer. On the other hand, freeing Ukraine and Moldova from its restrictions may be more of a slap in Putin's face than anyone wants to deliver. Extremely unfortunate. The good news is that support seems to be coming from both sides of the aisle now, which is a good predictor that the right thing will be done here.
April 5, 2005 | Unregistered CommenterDave Sheridan
SCORE!
April 5, 2005 | Unregistered CommenterMarissa
Dave is too modest to link to his blog entry on Jackson-Vanik, so I'm going to do so:
The posting is here.
April 6, 2005 | Registered CommenterDan McMinn
To clarify a bit. Jackson-Venik is a leftover from the Cold War era of detante when fear of nuclear blowout was very real but both sides compromised on mutually-assured destruction. During the 1970s, people wanted to emigrate from the USSR. According to Israeli and US immigration policy, Jews had special rights to emigrate to Isreal and the US for religious reasons. The Soviets refused to allow them to leave because they knew that Jews wanted to leave for political reasons. So they were called "refusniks." Jackson-Venik was one way of fighting the USSR, knowing damn good and well that the Cold War was raging. If I am incorrect about this, somebody can clarify even more...
April 7, 2005 | Unregistered CommenterLeopolis

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