Ukraine hopes to initial its association agreement with the European Union by the end of March 2012, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has said.
"Ukrainian diplomats, together with their European partners, are preparing for the initialing of the association agreement, and we expect that this procedure, which in principle is technical in nature, but very important for the future agreement, will be conducted by the end of this month in Brussels," the director of the ministry’s information policy department, Oleh Voloshyn, told Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.
Earlier, Kommersant-Ukraine, citing its sources in the Foreign Ministry, reported that the EU-Ukraine association agreement would be initialed in Brussels on March 30.
On Feb. 27, EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fule said that the agreement would be initialed within a month and signed "in autumn, if the situation changes in Ukraine."
