Washington keeps close eye on Ukraine vote

Dec 22 '04
http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/AFP/2004/12/22/689341

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States will keep a close eye on Ukraine's rerun of its disputed presidential runoff election on Sunday, as Washington silently wishes for a victory of Western-leaning candidate Viktor Yushchenko in the former Soviet republic, analysts say.

The United States has maintained the same position since the November 21 runoff was contested as plagued with fraud, saying it wanted democracy to prevail amid an honest and transparent election.

Pro-Russia Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich had been declared the winner of the vote, which was annulled by the Supreme Court following huge street protests led by the opposition.

The disputed election also drove a wedge between Russia and the West.

"As far as the long-term progress of Ukraine toward the Euro-Atlantic community, obviously having a free and stable democracy is a major step in that direction," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told AFP this week.

Former top US presidential adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said the success of democracy would affect both Ukraine and Russia.

"The issue in Ukraine is not a Russia versus the West issue, it is rather an issue of democracy, both in Ukraine and in Russia, versus no democracy," said Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser.

A westward move in Ukraine -- the second-largest European nation geographically after Russia -- is in the United States' interest, analysts say.

"Of course, the US would have preferred Yushchenko to Yanukovich," said Anders Aslund, director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Aslund noted that Yushchenko met with US Vice President Dick Cheney in February 2003.

But Washington has treaded carefully in Ukraine to avoid angering Russia and creating a new source of international tension, and to ensure it would keep Kiev's support in the war in Iraq, where it has sent 1,600 troops, analysts say.

President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin have good relations, but the Ukrainian crisis sparked mutual accusations of interference in Kiev's national affairs.

On December 9, US Secretary of State Colin Powell rejected Russian claims that the US-based democracy group Freedom House -- which runs education programs for political parties and promotes voter rights in newly democratic states -- had done anything "inappropriate" in Ukraine.

He also denied that the US government or Freedom House had taken sides in Ukraine's election.

The non-governmental organization, which has an office in Kiev and most Eastern European capitals, is headed by former CIA director James Woolsey.

US officials also fear seeing a new conflict in Eastern Europe.

"Instability there would create problems that would make the Balkans look like nothing," a State Department official, who asked not to be named, said late last month.

© 2004 AFP