RICHARD HOLBROOKE on Chris Matthews MSNBC Dec 13, 2004

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. If this story sounds like the plot from a John (UNINTELLIGIBLE) novel, you're right except this is real. A Ukrainian presidential candidate, the one not backed by Russia's leader Vladimir Putin was poisoned as he ran for president. By whom we don't know but the intrigue grows by the day.

Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke has just returned from Ukraine. Do you think this man was actually poisoned, the opposition candidate?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE, FMR. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: There's no doubt. Look at the photographs, Chris. In July he was a Hollywood movie star handsome guy. His face started falling apart. Here it's pock-marked and gray now. He was clearly poisoned. The Viennese doctors failed to find it right away. It's dioxin. And the only question is whodunnit?

I was in Ukraine yesterday and I can tell you that the suspicions are running high that it somehow has something to do with the KGB and the Russians. But there is no proof of that.

MATTHEWS: The suspicion now runs merely the suspicion that it comes from the Russians not from the preferred candidate of the incumbent president of Ukraine?

HOLBROOKE: That's the suspicion but nobody knows. The important thing is that on December 26 there will be another runoff. Viktor Yushchenko, the poisoned man, the man whom Moscow opposes, is going to win. It is a historic moment for Ukraine and Europe. Ukraine as we all learned in high school and college, Ukraine and Russia were one single history. It turns
out the Ukrainians didn't see it that way. They have always sought full independence. They left the Soviet Union 12 years ago. That was a sort of halfway house. Now they're going to really break Moscow. It's a dramatic and historic event.

MATTHEWS: I went to school with a lot of Ukrainians in Philadelphia. And since a lot of them were frankly all of them were Roman Catholic, I got to know a lot of them. Has this been a long-standing sentiment of the Ukrainian people to break from mother Russia?

HOLBROOKE: Yes, it has been but your Ukrainian high school friends knew something that we were not taught in college, which was there was a separate Ukrainian identity.

By the way, Chris, I brought with me to show you two pieces of propaganda which I'd like to show you which were put out by the government forces and which everyone in Moscow every one in Kiev thought had been put out by the Russians.

The first one is a photograph put out by the government forces showing President Bush and Viktor Yushchenko, the candidate who was poisoned. This is obviously a combination of Bush's face and Yushchenko's face. The Yushchenko part of the face before he was poisoned. And this is to suggest to the Ukrainian people that he is an American puppet. The second is Bush actually holding Yushchenko as a puppet. And underneath it it says, "Here is our president." And they've crossed out the "P", you see the red mark over the "P" in president so that it says here is our resident. And of course all people in the former Soviet Union know that resident means
KGB chief.

So this is the kind of stuff that's been put out over the last few months. But the really dramatic thing is that the streets of Kiev have been taken over by young idealistic demonstrators who are occupying the streets. They have a tent city. I visited them. I sat with them in their tents. The tents have been put up by the Ukrainian army. The electricity and the heating in the tents because its cold in Ukraine in winter is given by the mayor who defected from the government that appointed him and these kids are going to sit in the center of Ukraine right through December 26 and beyond until Yushchenko becomes president.

The chance to do what the Chinese did at Tiananmen Square, crackdown has gone, the government can't use force. The supreme irony to me was while the center of Kiev was occupied by these demonstrators, and MSNBC is show them very effectively in your news coverage, there was President Kuczma (ph), the virtual strongman controlling Ukraine, trapped in a villa on the suburbs of Kiev because he can't get into his regular office from which he ruled Ukraine for 10 years. So what we're seeing, Chris, is one of the great events in the history of modern Europe. Ukraine, after 1,000 years, is just days from a full, final declaration of independence from Russia. It's quite something.

MATTHEWS: I'm trying to put it in line with the other apocryphal events of the end of the Cold War. One was the failure of the Warsaw Pact tanks to move when the government in Hungary basically opened up the Iron Curtain. The other I guess was in 1991 when Yeltsin stood down the tanks of the Red Army.

HOLBROOKE: And the fall of the Berlin Wall.

MATTHEWS: Right. That went in between. And you put this one in that category of important events?

HOLBROOKE: If as I believe will happen on December 26, Viktor Yushchenko will become the new president of the Ukraine. It is a stunning event. And the biggest loser here is Vladimir Putin. He has had a terrible year, an anus horribleous (ph), to quote Queen Elizabeth in another context.

He lost Georgia in March. He's had the Beslan school tragedy. Hes had this drama with (UNINTELLIGIBLE), he's cracked down on the press, he is losing his friends. President Bush is going to have to re-evaluate the four-year love affair he had with Putin because he's gotten nothing from it and now Putin, as these things I showed show, the Russians are accusing
Bush of running this election. So I think what you're going to see here is a very dramatic set of events. Putin is isolated, he's angry, hes lashing out at the west. We're going to have to back Yushchenko. My own personal view is we should encourage Ukraine to join NATO which would be something you and I could never have imagined a few years ago.

MATTHEWS: How would you gauge President Bush's performance? Has he been too restrained or well advised to be restrained in terms of U.S. participation in this Ukrainian fight for freedom?

HOLBROOKE: He's been criticized by the press but there is a method to what he's doing. He is trying not to attack Putin directly, far less than the Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in that joint press conference. Martin lashed out at Putin, Bush did not.

But his missions, his embassy, Secretary Powell, have been very firm on this so I am not prepared to criticize President Bush right now. The real test will come after Yushchenko takes over. Are we going to invite him to Washington right away? By the way, his wife is like your high school friends. She's a Ukrainian-American from Chicago.

Will Bush invite Yushchenko to Washington right away, will he address the joint session of Congress, my guess is he will. It will be very dramatic. And then finally will we encourage them to join NATO and will we re-evaluate our relationship with Putin? We don't want to have a new Cold War. I can't stress that highly enough. And Ukraine has to get along well with Russia, its giant neighbor which controls a lot of its economy. But on the other hand, Ukraine after 1,000 years in Russian airspace, wants to look to the west and we should encourage it.

MATTHEWS: Thanks very much. Richard Holbrooke, former United States ambassador to the United Nations.