UKRAINE SEEN AS PART OF CENTRAL EUROPE.

Receiving Czech president Vaclav Havel in Kyiv, Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma deplored "the historic injustice that Ukraine, geographically situated near the center of Europe, has been separated from Central Europe for so long." Havel, who yesterday completed an official visit to Ukraine, handed to Kuchma facsimiles of the correspondence exchanged in 1918 by the first president of independent Ukraine, Mikhaylo Hrushevsky, with his Czech counterpart, Tomas Masaryk. The Czech president asserted his country’s "full and unambiguous support" for Ukraine’s accession to European institutions. He and Kuchma announced that they were in "complete consensus on all the European and international issues discussed." However, Ukrainian parliament chairman Oleksandr Moroz used his meeting with Havel to criticize NATO’s enlargement. A package of bilateral economic and legal agreements were signed during Havel’s visit. (Ukrinform, UNIAN, June 30, July 1)

In Washington, meanwhile, Zbigniew Brzezinski has come out in support of the formation of a Polish-Romanian-Ukrainian triangle aimed at strengthening the security of Central Europe and of each of the three countries. This in turn could become a key factor in consolidating the stability of Europe as a whole, Brzezinski told a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the subject of "Ukraine-Poland-Romania in Contemporary Europe." Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Volodymyr Shcherbak, told the conference that accession to Western institutions and regional cooperation in Central Europe are Kyiv’s main foreign policy priorities. The Polish and Romanian ambassadors stressed the potential for political, economic, and security cooperation with Ukraine. (Itar-Tass, Ukrinform, July 1-2)

Moldovan President Warns Parliament Against Blocking Reforms.