Czech Ambassador Ivan Počuch has hinted the EU may not enter into an association agreement with Ukraine that the two sides are due to sign on March 30. Speaking in an interview with the Ukrainian daily Den, he also defended the EU’s ambassador to Kiev against recent accusations by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry following remarks about President Viktor Janukovych.
Počuch said that since criminal proceedings were launched against former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and former interior minister Yuriy Lutsenko, the EU has been discussing the issue on the highest level. “If the situation is not put right, it’s necessarily to tell the Ukrainian public in honesty that the process of concluding the agreements on association and the free trade zone will be suspended,” Počuch told the daily.
The consensus within the EU is that the trials of Tymoshenko and Lutsenko who are now both in prison were politically motivated in order to remove them from politics.
Počuch also expressed his support for the EU’s ambassador to the Ukraine, Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira, whom the Ukrainian foreign ministry lambasted in late February in reaction for telling a business conference that President Janukovych had broken promises to improve the country’s business environment. The Czech Ambassador said Pinto Teixeira was speaking in the name of the EU.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry responded to Pinto Teixeira’s remarks with a statement claiming he had broken diplomatic traditions. “The issue is not just the tone of ambassador Teixeira's remarks, but the fact that a person sent to Ukraine as a diplomat is trying to get involved in the political process,” the ministry complained.
Similarly, Počuch defended an open letter signed by the foreign ministers of the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and the UK stating concern about democracy in the Ukraine as a result of the trials and warning of the prospect of suspending ratification of the Ukraine’s prospective association agreements with the EU.
“I think the letter was to the point. I hope it won’t be interpreted as an act of murder on the part of those five countries. On the contrary, it’s an expression of our interest and concern about Ukraine,” Počuch said of the letter published on March 5.
Despite the letter of warning, EU and Ukrainian representatives are due to sign Ukraine’s association agreement with the union in Brussels on March 30.
