KIEV PONDERS APPEAL FOR INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry leaders said yesterday that Kiev would, if necessary, turn to the international community, and specifically to permanent members of the UN Security Council and to the OSCE, with a request to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Ukrainian foreign minister Hennady Udovenko and his first deputy, Anton Buteiko, stated that the Duma’s two bills and the deadlock in the fleet talks (see above) could impel Ukraine to appeal to the U.S. in its capacity as a co-guarantor of Ukraine’s independence, territorial integrity, and inviolability of its borders. Udovenko and Buteiko recalled that the U.S., Britain, France, and Russia had extended those written guarantees in 1994, in connection with Ukraine’s renunciation of its nuclear arsenal and its accession to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

The Ukrainian parliament’s foreign policy commission chairman, Boris Oliinik, stated that the legislature is prepared to consider a draft law on declaring the Black Sea Fleet a foreign force unlawfully stationed in Ukraine and setting a deadline for its withdrawal. (Interfax-Ukraine, UNIAN, November 12) Kiev’s moves seem to be aimed at dissuading the Duma from exacerbating tensions, at encouraging the Russian executive branch to resist the Duma’s action, and at protecting relations between the two governments from a damaging spillover.

The Terminology: Wrangling Over Bases in Sevastopol.