YALTA, Ukraine -- A trio of European politicians warned President Viktor Yanukovych that Ukraine's relationship with Europe has no chance of progressing unless several key issues are addressed.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt,
chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament
Elmar Brok and Commissioner for Enlargement and European
Neighbourhood Policy Štefan Füle met
behind closed doors with Yanukovych at the Yalta European Strategy
forum in Crimea on Sept. 14 to deliver the message.
They issued a statement with key points
of their message.
“ At the meeting today we have
stressed the following: There should be no room for a pause in
the EU-Ukraine relations and no room for compromise on values. The
issue of selective justice needs to be addressed in order to move
ahead to a new level of our relations through the Association
Agreement.
‘We regret that the consequences of the
current situation will prevent two important leaders of the
opposition from standing in parliamentary elections following trials
which did not respect international standards as regards fair,
transparent and independent legal process,” the statement said.
They also said that the upcoming Oct.
28 elections have to be conducted to the highest international
standards.
“The legitimacy of the future
parliament will depend on the conduct of the elections which need to
be free and fair, in accordance with high international standards. In
this context we stressed the importance of the freedom of the
media,”they said.
The trio of politicians met with
Yanukovych last year in the same format. Their statements sounded
much more optimistic then, despite the fact that opposition leader
Yulia Tymoshenko was arrested a month prior to the meeting. They all
then said that they delivered a message to Yanukovych about
Tymoshenko’s arrest and that it was heard.
They also believed that the president
would take action to prevent a souring of Ukraine’s relationship with
the EU. That did not happen and Ukraine’s integration to Europe has
all but halted since then, while the president is facing
international isolation.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].
