UKRAINE WORRIED ABOUT NUKES IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

At a Kiev briefing October 17, Foreign Ministry chief spokesman Yuri Serhiev came out against the deployment of nuclear weapons on the territories of countries in Ukraine’s vicinity which seek to join NATO. Such deployment would place Ukraine "on the line of confrontation" between an enlarged NATO and Russia, Serhiev said. He disclosed that Ukraine has proposed that NATO prepare and adopt a new document, tentatively to be entitled "NATO’s Enlargement: Study Two," which would take into account the opinions and proposals of Partnership for Peace member countries that are not candidates for NATO membership. On the same day Ukrainian deputy prime minister (responsible for security affairs) Vasyl Durdinets told a visiting delegation of the Council of Europe that the prospect of nuclear weapons deployment in the Central European countries worries Ukraine’s leadership which "is taking all possible steps to maintain stability in Central Europe." Durdinets called for turning Central Europe into a nuclear-free region. (12)

Poland and the Czech republic have offered to host nuclear weapons as part of their membership obligations, once they join NATO. The above statements represent Kiev’s strongest official and public expression of concern over tentative proposals to station nuclear weapons in peacetime on the territories of new NATO members. The matter was discussed with NATO’s Assistant General Secretary Gebhardt von Moltke in Kiev in the immediately preceding days. Kiev’s concerns stem mainly from its understanding that NATO would not guarantee Ukraine’s security against a possible Russian overreaction which might embroil Ukraine in a conflict or pressure it into a Russian-led alliance system.

Crimean Constitution, Round II