UKRAINE-NATO COOPERATION PROGRAM APPROVED.

President Leonid Kuchma yesterday issued a decree approving Ukraine’s state program of cooperation with NATO for the period 1999-2001. Drafted by an interagency committee, the program outlines joint Ukraine-NATO activities in the spheres of foreign policy, military security, airspace control, defense industry and research, information technologies, space exploration, nuclear nonproliferation and antiterrorism efforts, and other areas. Kyiv and NATO will review the program’s implementation in special meetings on an annual basis.

The NATO-Ukraine Special Partnership Charter, signed in 1997, opened the way to the three-year program decreed yesterday. Kuchma’s office described this program as the most comprehensive and far-reaching of all existing programs of cooperation between NATO and the individual Partner countries (Ukrainian agencies, November 10; see Georgia-U.S. agreement in the South Caucasus section below).–VS

GEORGIA-U.S. MILITARY COOPERATION PROGRAM SIGNED.