[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 137 (Thursday, October 17, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10646-S10648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE LEADERSHIP IN UKRAINE

  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the current leadership in Ukraine, led by 
President Leonid Kuchma, has been one of unmet promises. Failed efforts 
at economic reform, violent repression of independent media; and a rise 
in government corruption and cronyism has robbed the citizens of 
Ukraine of the bright future they deserve.
  Ukraine is a vital country of 48 million people in the heart of 
Europe. A Europe whole, free and secure cannot be achieved without 
Ukraine's integration into Europe. However, I have become convinced 
that the actions of Ukraine's President Kuchma have demonstrated to the 
people of Ukraine and the world that their integration cannot be 
achieved with Kuchma at the helm.
  Secret recordings made by a former security guard, who is now seeking 
asylum in the United States, raise suspicions that President Kuchma had 
knowledge of or involvement in the brutal murder of journalist Gyorgi 
Gongadze. This callous act shows that he will stop at nothing to 
repress the opposition and independent media who challenge his control.
  As the United States and the international community are striving to 
eliminate the threat posed by Iraq's possession of weapons of mass 
destruction, evidence shows that President Kuchma approved the sale of 
the Kolchuga radar--an advanced system whose purpose is to threaten 
U.S. aircraft in violation of United Nations sanctions. The State 
Department recently confirmed the authenticity of an audio recording of 
President Kuchma approving the sale of a Kochulga radar system to Iraq 
in July 2000. Iraq has fired anti-aircraft missiles at coalition 
aircraft and while our expert pilots are trained to counter such 
measures, the Kolchuga radar system gives a boost to Iraqi air defenses 
by detecting approaching aircraft without tipping off the pilots.
  Ukraine remains important to the United States, we must stand firm 
with the people and the brave reformers who hope for a better day for 
Ukraine. However, President Kuchma's day has passed. He deserves 
nothing more than what his actions bring him, isolation.
  In bilateral meetings the United States should continue to meet at a 
ministerial level and in important multilateral organizations we should 
strive for the same. This includes NATO. At NATO's Prague Summit next 
month, the scheduled NATO-Ukraine Council meeting is an important 
opportunity for NATO and Ukraine to look for greater cooperation. On a 
range of issues, Ukraine has certain assets such as strategic lift 
which could be beneficial to our European NATO allies who lack such 
capabilities. NATO should conduct this meeting at the Ministerial level 
rather than at a Presidential level and send an important signal to the 
government of Ukraine. To do otherwise would result in President Bush 
sitting two seats down from a corrupt leader who is arming Iraq at a 
Summit which will likely focus on a possible war with Iraq.
  I ask unanimous consent that the following articles that appeared in 
the Wall Street Journal on October 9, and The Washington Post on August 
8 and September 22 be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the articles was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Wall Street Journal, Oct. 9, 2002]

                       Ukraine's Rogue President

                         (By Adrian Karatnycky)

       In his speech Monday night, President Bush laid out the 
     threat posed by the Iraqi regime should it be able to ``buy, 
     produce or

[[Page S10647]]

     steal'' the ingredients for a nuclear weapon. But while the 
     idea that any nation would willingly aid the murderous 
     intentions of Saddam Hussein has long seem far-fetched, the 
     possibility hit close to home in recent days.
       Just a week before the speech, the Bush administration 
     confirmed that Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma had approved 
     the sale of an antiaircraft radar system to Iraq. President 
     Kuchma's decision, in clear violation of United Nations 
     sanctions, may be the first sign of complications with loose 
     technology in the states of the former Soviet Union.


                        deadly know-how for iraq

       Although Ukraine destroyed its last nuclear missile silo 
     last year, the country is still an institutional repository 
     of deadly know-how. It had also, up until last week, been 
     considered a irreproachable friend of the U.S. But the 
     revelation creates doubts which could fundamentally alter the 
     U.S.'s relationship with Ukraine, and particularly with its 
     president. Although Mr. Kuchma has denied any involvement in 
     a sale and offered a joint investigation, the FBI has 
     authenticated a tape of the Ukrainian president and his arms-
     export chief hatching the scheme.
       Far from being any old technology, the radar system in 
     question could make a significant difference for Iraq. If the 
     U.S. goes to war, Mr. Kuchma will have tried to provide 
     deadly technology that could cost the lives of American 
     pilots. Whatever the next steps taken against Iraq, Ukraine's 
     president cannot escape without paying a heavy price. If the 
     U.S. succeeds in installing a rigorous U.N. inspections 
     regime, an example must be made of Mr. Kuchma to ensure 
     international compliance with anti-Iraq sanctions.
       President Bush's anger over the plot by a country that was 
     once the third biggest recipient of U.S. foreign aid is said 
     to be palpable. U.S. officials suggest Mr. Bush is especially 
     livid that Mr. Kuchma plotted the sale to Iraq just before a 
     summit in 2000 with President Clinton, where the U.S.-Ukraine 
     ``strategic partnership'' was celebrated. U.S. officials 
     responsible for Ukraine policy are also indicating they 
     believe Ukraine's ``Kolchuha'' early-warning radar system has 
     been deployed in Iraq, suggesting there is some intelligence 
     data to reach such a conclusion.
       The new Iraq revelations come in the wake of incriminating 
     details contained in hundreds of additional hours of 
     clandestinely taped conversations of Mr. Kuchma's meetings 
     recorded and smuggled out of the country by his former 
     bodyguard who lives in exile in the U.S. These depict a crude 
     and venal leader at the center of corrupt and criminal 
     behavior. Several of the conversations have been 
     authenticated by the Virginia-based voice analysis firm Bek 
     Tech, headed by a former FBI operative.
       The behavior appears to fit a pattern. Mr. Kuchma's Ukraine 
     has emerged as a leading supply source for illicit traffic in 
     global arms. In defiance of a U.N. embargo, arms and 
     ammunition of Ukrainian origin have been seized in the 
     weapons caches of Unita guerrillas in Angola. Widespread 
     allegations suggest Ukrainian weapons breached a mid- 1990s 
     arms embargo in the former Yugoslavia and helped equip 
     Afghanistan's Taliban. In 1997, Nigerian authorities alleged 
     that Ukraine was involved in the sale of three aircraft 
     fighters to rebels from Sierra Leone.
       For years, Ukrainian officials strenuously denied that the 
     illegal arms trade was officially sanctioned. But the 
     authenticated Kuchma tape suggests that while Ukraine is not 
     a rogue state, it has a rogue president. Apart from the Iraq 
     conversation, there is a tape of a meeting between Mr. Kuchma 
     and Oleksander Zhukov, a reputed underworld figure with ties 
     to Leonid Minin, a suspected international arms dealer.
       Mr. Kuchma's credibility with the U.S. has been pulverized 
     in recent months. In the summer of 2001, the Ukrainian 
     president apparently lied to National Security Adviser 
     Condoleezza Rice in asserting that Ukraine supported a 
     ``political solution'' to the ethnic conflict in Macedonia. 
     All the while--with his approval--Ukraine persisted in 
     shipping weapons to the Macedonian government.
       In response to U.S. pressure, Ukraine's legislature will 
     launch an investigation into the Iraq sale. But the 
     legislature has refused to investigate an array of alleged 
     crimes involving the president, including the unsolved 
     murder in 2000 of opposition journalist Gyorgi Gonzadze.
       With the next presidential election coming in two years, 
     the best hope for Ukraine--and for the U.S.--is in pressuring 
     Mr. Kuchma to step aside quietly in favor of early elections. 
     Demonstrations, which began last month and drew nearly 
     100,000 protestors nationwide, are scheduled to start up 
     again later this month.
       For Ukraine's president to exit the scene, protests against 
     him must widen--71% of Ukrainians tell pollsters he should 
     go. The reformist former prime minister, Viktor Yushchenko, 
     must try to woo Mr. Kuchma's wavering supporters, among them 
     oligarchs and regional leaders, to support a transition. 
     Diplomatic isolation of Mr. Kuchma by the U.S. and Europe 
     must be airtight and confined to the president and his 
     corrupt cronies, not the entire Ukrainian government or 
     nation. Finally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who stands 
     by Mr. Kuchma, must be convinced that Russian interests would 
     be better served by a reformist-led coalition government 
     including significant representation from Ukraine's pro-
     Russian eastern regions.
       The current U.S. review of its Ukraine policy must include 
     initiatives that help encourage these trends while ensuring 
     that change is constitutional and peaceful.
       For months, Ukraine's rumor mills have been working 
     overtime with hints that a deal to pave the way for a post-
     Kuchma Ukraine is in the works. One possible compromise would 
     be to give Mr. Kuchma blanket amnesty for past 
     transgressions. Even Yuliya Tymoshenko, a former economic 
     magnate and deputy prime minister who is Mr. Kuchma's most 
     bitter enemy, supports such a deal. As she told me several 
     months ago, ``If one criminal can sleep easily so that the 
     rest of the country can sleep well, then so be it.''


                        russia's cynical embrace

       If Mr. Kuchma resigns, Ukraine's Iraq-gate will have borne 
     positive fruit. If he does not, the U.S. will confront two 
     problems: Ukraine's president will demonstrate to other 
     leaders that you can conspire with Iraq and get away with it. 
     And Mr. Kuchma's inevitable isolation will drive Ukraine, a 
     strategically important country of 50 million that sits on 
     NATO's eastern frontier, into Russia's cynical embrace.
       Both outcomes would cause headaches for Europe and the U.S. 
     But the worst would be if Ukraine's movement toward Europe, 
     democracy and the rule of law is hijacked by Mr. Kuchma's 
     insistence on remaining in office.
                                  ____


                [From the Washington Post, Aug. 8, 2002]

                          Ukraine and the West

       NATO's coming eastward expansion and its new partnership 
     with Russia have prompted a major change in direction by one 
     of Europe's largest and most unsettled nations, Ukraine. A 
     country of more than 50 million people that is still 
     struggling to gain its political and economic footing after a 
     decade of independence, Ukraine has abruptly dropped its 
     longstanding policy of balancing itself between the West and 
     Russia. Its government recently requested talks on becoming a 
     full member of both NATO and the European Union. The reaction 
     has been guarded: Both European governments and the Bush 
     administration seem unsure whether Ukraine should be a part 
     of the Western alliance in the future, and there is 
     resistance even to upgrading its relations with the EU. But 
     Ukraine is too big to be safely kept on the back burner. The 
     United States and Europe must formulate a clear answer. In 
     some respects, the question of what to do about Ukraine seems 
     easy. Given its huge size, strategic location in southern and 
     central Europe and relatively sophisticated industrial 
     economy, Ukraine is a natural member of the translational 
     organizations that are slowly spreading across the continent. 
     Without Ukraine, the longstanding Western goal of a Europe 
     ``whole and free'' will remain incomplete; without an anchor 
     in those institutions, the country's long-term stability and 
     even its viability as an independent nation could be 
     seriously threatened. Yet Ukraine as it exists today is a 
     most difficult partner for the West to take on. Its economy 
     remains a post-Communist shambles, and though it is nominally 
     a democracy its president, Leonid Kuchma, has frequently 
     resorted to thuggish tactics. His own poll ratings are in 
     single digits, but Mr. Kuchma managed to manipulate a recent 
     parliamentary election so that his cronies, rather than 
     opposition parties that won 70 percent of the popular vote, 
     maintained control.
       Of even greater concern in Ukraine's involvement in 
     improper arms trafficking and service as a transit point for 
     illegal drugs and other contraband. Floating Western appeals, 
     Ukraine's big weapons companies have shipped arms to 
     Macedonia, Serbia and East Africa; secretly recorded 
     audiotapes suggest that Mr. Kuchma himself at least discussed 
     selling sophisticated antiaircraft systems to Iraq. Iraq 
     recently opened an embassy in Kiev and announced it was 
     interested in purchasing Ukrainian industrial goods and 
     technology.
       The Bush administration and most European governments have 
     steadily distanced themselves from Mr. Kuchma. Congress has 
     reduced U.S. aid. Some officials argue that Ukraine should 
     not be invited even to begin discussions with NATO on 
     conditions for becoming a member, at least as long as Mr. 
     Kuchma and his cronies are in power. But NATO, which has laid 
     out comprehensive and detailed reform programs for each of 
     the countries seeking membership offers later this year, 
     could also provide a structure for long-term change by 
     Ukraine. A dialogue could constructively begin on such issues 
     as arms sales, drug trafficking and military reform, with the 
     understanding that these are the first steps in a membership 
     preparation process that could extend for a decade. Making 
     countries such as Ukraine fit for the club of Western 
     democracies may not be NATO's first purpose, but the alliance 
     is the best vehicle that exists for managing what is, 
     ultimately, a transition vital to long-term European 
     security.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 22, 2002]

                     Unfinished Business in Europe

                          (By Michael McFaul)

       President Bush has made a strong commitment to a distinct 
     tradition in international diplomacy by stating repeatedly 
     that the United States has a strategic interest in regime 
     change in Iraq. If Iraq changes from

[[Page S10648]]

     dictatorship to democracy, so the argument goes, then Iraq 
     will follow a friendlier foreign policy toward the United 
     States.
       To make his case, Bush has a powerful historical experience 
     to draw upon: the end of the Cold War. Regime change in 
     Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union fundamentally enhanced 
     American national security. If Iraq possessed Russia's 
     nuclear arsenal today, the United States would be in grave 
     danger. Two decades ago we feared this same arsenal in the 
     hands of the Kremlin. Today we do not. The reason we do not 
     is that the regime in Russia has become more democratic and 
     market-oriented and therefore also more Western-oriented. 
     Unfortunately, the task of promoting democratic regime change 
     in the former Soviet Union is not complete. In rightly 
     focusing on how to promote democratic regimes in the Muslim 
     world, the Bush administration is failing to complete the 
     consolidation of capitalism and democracy in the former 
     communist world and the integration of these new democracies 
     into the Western community of democratic states.
       To assume that this process of democratization and 
     integration will march forward without American prodding is 
     misguided. First, the lines between East and West in Europe 
     are beginning to harden, not fade. After the next round of 
     expansion, the European Union is very unlikely to offer 
     membership to countries farther to the east in the near 
     future. Bureaucrats in Brussels simply laugh when the idea of 
     Russian or Ukrainian membership in the EU is raised. NATO has 
     moved more aggressively to extend its borders eastward, but 
     it too will become fatigued and inwardly focused after the 
     next round of expansion. If the prospect of membership in 
     NATO and the EU can no longer be considered a foreign policy 
     goal for those left out of the next wave of expansion, then 
     the pull of the West will diminish.
       Second, democratization on the periphery of Europe has 
     stalled. A dictator who praises Stalin and Hitler runs 
     Belarus. President Vladimir Putin has weakened democratic 
     institutions and grossly violated the human rights of his own 
     citizens in Chechnya in his attempt to build ``managed 
     democracy'' in Russia. In Ukraine, President Leonid Kuchma 
     aspires to create the same level of state control over the 
     democratic process as Putin has achieved in Russia to ensure 
     a smooth--that is, Kuchma-friendly--transition of power when 
     his term ends in 2004. In contrast to Russia, Ukraine has a 
     vibrant democratic opposition, whose leader, Viktor 
     Yuschenko, is likely to win a free and fair presidential 
     election. This vote in 2004 will be free and fair, however, 
     only if the West is watching. Only in Moldova has 
     authorization creep been avoided, but that's because of the 
     weakness of the state, hardly a condition conducive to long-
     term democratic consolidation.
       Over time, the combination of a closing Western border and 
     growing authoritar- ianism on the Eastern side of this wall 
     spells disaster for American security interests in the 
     region. As the United States gears up to create new regimes 
     with a democratic and Western orientation in the Middle East, 
     it may be losing the gains of similar efforts of democratic 
     promotion in the communist world during the Cold War.
       Obviously, President Bush's foreign policy team is 
     overworked and focused now on Iraq. Nonetheless, the United 
     States should be able to conduct more than one foreign policy 
     at the same time. In numerous speeches, Bush has already 
     outlined his grand strategy for foreign policy. He has stated 
     repeatedly that the United States should champion freedom and 
     liberty for people around the world, and when necessary even 
     promote regime change in those countries that do not offer 
     their citizens basic democratic rights. To be a successful 
     and credible doctrine, however, this strategy must be applied 
     consistently.
       When diplomatic historians look back on the 1990s, they 
     should describe it as the era of European integration. They 
     will do so, however, only if the project is completed. As the 
     Bush administration begins the process of promoting 
     democratic regime change along a new frontier in the Muslim 
     world, it must also finish the job on the European frontier.
       The writer, a Hoover Fellow and professor of political 
     science at Stanford University, is a senior associate at the 
     Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

                          ____________________