THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF ANDRIJ SHKIL

            PRESENTATION
       of the MP’s Andriy Shkil

 NATO’s Future Political Agenda

(Rapporteur Raynell Andreychuk)

     Valensia, 15 novembre 2008

 

Dear Mr.Chairman,
Dear Ms.Rapporteur,
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,


First of all, I would like to join those colleagues who have already congratulated the rapporteur, dear Ms.Raynell Andreychuk, on the excellent results of her efforts, the report  we discuss.

Naturally, the Ukrainian delegation is very much interested  in the perspectives of mutual relations between Ukraine and the Alliance. Several provisions of the report, in particular point 6, are devoted  to this aspect and I would like to draw your attention to it.

This point attracts attention by its objective and constructive character and we are ready to accept it as our own  vision of the situation in Ukraine as well as its cooperation with NATO. We are absolutely aware that it is we who are to make the decisive breakthrough in providing new perspectives in mutual relations with the Alliance and we shall make it by  using all our constructive potential. I mean those forces in the Ukrainian society  who consider the Euro-Atlantic integration of  our country as the principal civilised choice of the future and who need support including that from the outside.

At the same time not everything depends on the Ukrainian side alone. We would expect some of our Western partners to be more pragmatic. Their excessive restraint in determining new perspectives of cooperation between Ukraine and NATO  is preconditioned mostly by the hypothetical arguments  and by groundless fear of possible negative consequences of  the decisive progress in our bilateral relations. This restraint could hardly be qualified as the contribution to the solution of those common security problems which worry all of us. Moreover, the effective counteraction  to the new challenges is only possible  due to our joint efforts. There are a lot of proofs to that. It would be enough to mention the NATO’s ongoing operations in each of which Ukraine is the permanent partner.

That is why we accept the rapporteur’s position with great optimism. She considers further deepening of mutual relations between the Alliance and Ukraine, their transfer to the higher institutional level, in particular via Ukraine’s joining the Membership Action Plan in the nearest future, as the added strategic value to security  and stability in the Euro-Atlantic space. We would like to express our special gratitude to her. We are also full of belief  that this vision will dominate among all of our colleagues, at least those who are present here.

Thank you for the attention.