Bush supports Ukraine's bid to join NATO
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KIEV, Ukraine: President George W. Bush expressed strong support Tuesday for Ukrainian ambitions of joining NATO on the eve of a meeting of alliance leaders in Romania where Ukraine appears likely to be rebuffed.
Beginning a week-long trip through Eastern Europe, Bush vigorously embraced the long-sought goal of the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, whose aspirations for NATO membership face fierce opposition at home and from his country's biggest neighbor, Russia.
"Your country has made a bold decision," Bush said, seated beside Yushchenko during his first visit to Ukraine, "and the United States strongly supports your request."
The NATO meeting, which begins Wednesday in Bucharest, will consider full membership for three countries - Albania, Croatia and Macedonia - and plans for potential membership for Ukraine and Georgia. The latter two, both former republics of the Soviet Union, have asked to be considered, but their applications have met skepticism within the alliance, as well as open opposition from Russia.
Germany and other countries have indicated that they would oppose invitations for Ukraine and Georgia, and France joined them in citing concerns about upsetting relations with Russia.
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"We are opposed to the entry of Georgia and Ukraine because we think that it is not a good answer to the balance of power within Europe and between Europe and Russia," the French prime minister, François Fillon, said in an interview with France-Inter radio, according to an Associated Press report.
Because NATO operates on consensus, the opposition of any single country can block any alliance decision. Macedonia's application for membership, for example, remains stalled by Greece over a disagreement on that country's use of the name Macedonia, which is also a Greek region.
Bush said he would continue to make the case for Ukraine's NATO membership in Bucharest and said he had already made his point of view clear to President Vladimir Putin. Bush went on to say that in talks with NATO allies, all had assured him that Russia could wield no veto over the matter. "And I take them at their word," he said.
Putin is scheduled to attend the meeting in Bucharest alongside NATO leaders and to meet with Bush over the weekend in Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea in Russia.
"I wouldn't prejudge the outcome," Bush said of the NATO decisions on membership.
He also dismissed as "a misperception" media reports suggesting that the United States had agreed to put off the NATO aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia in exchange for cooperation with Russia on plans to install parts of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Russia has vehemently opposed the missile defenses, but Putin appeared open to a recent American proposal to operate the system more openly and invite Russian cooperation.
Bush said he was hopeful of persuading Putin that the missile defenses were not a threat but rather an effort to protect Europe, and even Russia itself, from a limited missile attack from the Middle East. "A missile can fly north just as it can west," he said, evidently referring to a possible missile strike launched from Iran.
Here in Ukraine, where Bush's visit has been met with pride as well as apprehension, the question of NATO membership mirrors sharp ethnic and political divisions between those favoring closer ties to Russia and those seeking to turn the country toward Western Europe.
On Monday and again Tuesday, protesters gathered on Independence Square in Kiev, where tens of thousands gathered in 2004 during what was known as the Orange Revolution to protest fraudulent elections, eventually clearing the way for Yushchenko's ascent to power as president in January 2005.
Now the protesters represented the Communist Party of Ukraine and others, waving flags with the hammer and sickle and displaying banners that included obscenities directed against Bush and NATO.
"Just because there were a bunch of Soviet-era flags you shouldn't read too much into it," Bush said when asked whether Russia was exerting undue pressure on the alliance or on Ukraine by denouncing NATO's expansion as destabilizing.
He praised the political and economic progress in Ukraine since the 2004 protests and noted that Ukraine already contributed troops to NATO missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan, as well as to the American-led war in Iraq. "Ukraine is the only non-NATO country supporting every NATO mission," he said.
Yushchenko, whose presidency has been hobbled by political infighting, corruption and tensions with Russia, said that he took heart that support for NATO in the polls had steadily climbed - to 33 percent from 17 percent three years ago. He denounced the protesters in Kiev as people carrying "the same flags that caused totalitarianism and suffering."
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