Biden to Meet With Ukraines Leaders And Competitor to Reaffirm Us Support
Ukraines leaders will be seeking reassurances that Washingtons efforts to jump-start strained relations with Moscow will not come at the expense of Kievs drive to join NATO and integrate with the West.
Moscow firmly opposes NATO membership for Ukraine and for Georgia, another pro-Western ex-Soviet republic, which Biden will visit Wednesday.
Biden will meet President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Tuesday as well as key opposition leaders, who all plan to participate in Januarys presidential elections.
Yushchenko and Tymoshenko – though allies in the 2004 Orange Revolution that brought Yushchenko to power – are now bitter foes after falling out over a number of issues.
That has allowed Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-aligned president ousted in the 2004 regime change and who enjoys huge popularity in the Russian-dominant east of the country, to come back into the running for the January vote.
Russia, meanwhile, is watching Bidens visit to its former Soviet backyard with keen interest, suspicious that Washington is out to block any moves in Ukraine and Georgia back toward dependence on Moscow, their former Soviet provider.
But the U.S. has repeatedly denied that it seeks to dictate who should rule in any democratic country, and Antony J. Blinken, Bidens national security adviser, said in a conference call last week that “sovereign democracies have the right to … choose their own partnerships and alliances.”
An article in Tuesdays influential Russian newspaper Kommersant said one of Bidens potential aims was to persuade both Yushchenko and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who both face considerable popular opposition, to resign.
Saakashvili has vowed to see through his term, which ends in 2013. But the opposition has demanded his resignation, accusing him of launching an unwinable war against Russia in August.
After the Russian army repelled a Georgian attack on the breakaway province of South Ossetia in an attempt to bring the province back under Tbilisis control, thousands of Russian troops remain in South Ossetia and another separatist-held enclave, Abkhazia.
Only Russia and Nicaragua recognize the independence of the two regions, and President Barack Obama said during a recent Moscow summit that Georgias territorial integrity must be respected.
Most of the international observers who had monitored a cease-fire along Georgias de facto borders with the two regions had to leave after Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution extending their mandate. About 240 EU monitors remain.
Saakashvili, who had committed thousands of troops for U.S.-led missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, pleaded for military support from Washington during the fighting. But the U.S. did not intervene.
Georgian officials hope Washington will commit U.S. observers to join the EU mission.
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Associated Press writer David Nowak in Moscow contributed to this report.