US Expects New Beginning of Reforms in Ukraine

“During Leonid Kuchma’s visit to Washington, US President Bill Clinton pointed out one thing: it is better to make difficult decisions at the beginning of a political term than postpone it,” the US Ambassador Steven Pifer said the Monday before last, addressing journalists at the US Embassy in Kyiv. In his words, Ukraine still has five or six months to demonstrate that reforms are being carried out. Otherwise, “investment dollars” will go to other countries, while Ukraine, as the ranking diplomat put it, will lose its “window of opportunity.”

Thus America has decided for yet again to believe the promises of our leadership, but it marked the deadline after which it could lose patience. That the New World wants to see at long last some real reforms in Ukraine was evidenced by the speech Ambassador Pifer made at Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University before Mr. Kuchma’s US visit. (The American diplomat’s utterances about the absence of changes, bloated bureaucratic apparatus, and corruption caused the exchange of diplomatic notes between Ukraine and the US. Mr. Pifer has confirmed this information and expressed hope this will close the issue).

Yet the American ambassador called President Kuchma’s visit to the US very successful. And the point is not only in the fact that this is a standard diplomatic formula to characterize 90% of all presidential trips. First, the Ukrainian leader was in Washington “at the right time”: Vice President Al Gore thinks Ukraine has now “a very suitable moment for carrying out economic and administrative reforms, and combating corruption.” Moreover, the US leadership believes that Mr. Kuchma, who has received “a mandate of trust” from the Ukrainian people for the second time, must carry out reforms as soon as possible in order to justify this trust and not to frighten away foreign investors. Secondly, the US side was satisfied that the Ukrainian delegation told about “concrete measures by a concrete date,” which was especially stressed in the speech of Ukrainian Deputy Premier Serhiy Tyhypko.

The United States has always been willing to help us since Ukraine got independence. Now, too, it does not refuse to do so: according to the documents signed in Washington, the Americans will help us reform the electricity generating sector, found a regional ecological center, and implement military programs. Twenty program directions have been identified, for which Ukraine will get money from the US Agency for International Development. An agreement has also been reached on cooperation in studying “the impact of the Chornobyl accident on the environment and human health,” on cooperation in climate change, as well as on cooperation between the trade departments. Also discussed in Washington was interaction in the legal sphere. In particular, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Yevhen Marchuk raised the problem of crime during his talks at the FBI and the CIA. The legal attach О at the US embassy in Kyiv “is already well-prepared for cooperation with the relevant agencies,” Mr. Pifer noted.

There is no doubt the US will fulfill all the promises it gave in Washington. If only the Ukrainian side would not leave its commitments on paper and forget what it said.