Ambassador Taylor's Podcast for March

Dobroho Dnia.

I am very glad to welcome you back to the United States Embassy for a brief discussion of events that we've been thinking about and acting on this month.

The first bit of news is that President Bush is going to visit Kyiv the end of this month. That is, he will arrive here on the 31st of March and spend the whole day of the first of April here in Kyiv. He's looking forward to meeting with President Yushchenko, Prime Minister Tymoshenko. He will also talk to Ukrainians here in Kyiv. He's looking forward to getting to know this country and this city and its people, so we're very pleased that President Bush will be here very soon.

One of the reasons that he is coming is that he is en route to a summit of leaders of NATO nations on the second of April in Bucharest. At this summit, President Bush and other leaders of NATO allied countries will make important decisions about the future of NATO. One of the most important decisions that they will make is a decision on the application from Ukraine and Georgia, by the way, to the NATO alliance to begin a process that might or might not lead to membership. This is known as a Membership Action Plan. It begins a dialogue within the country where Ukrainian citizens would have the opportunity to ask each other questions, ask the government questions, ask NATO allies questions about what it means to be a member of this alliance.

Joining NATO is a decision that the Ukrainian people will make only after this long debate. Joining NATO is a big decision. It's a big decision for the NATO alliance to have a new member. It's also a big decision for an applicant country like Ukraine and Georgia.

So these questions need to be discussed, need to be debated, and there's no rush, this can be done over many years. Other nations who have ended up joining NATO have taken a similarly long time to have this debate within their own societies. So this is an important process that is only now beginning. The membership question, not on the table today, will be on the table, conceivably, within the next several years.

That decision will be an important one for Ukraine, but it will not be one that will decide whether or not the United States and Ukraine will continue to have a close relationship. The United States and Ukraine will continue to have a close relationship whatever the people of Ukraine decide about NATO, whatever the people of Ukraine decide about the European Union. We have a strategic partnership. The United States and Ukraine are strategic partners, and this partnership will last for a very long time.

On the NATO question, there have already been many opportunities, for American soldiers and Ukrainian soldiers, for American sailors and Ukrainian sailors, American Air Force and Ukrainian Air Force, people to work together. A couple weeks ago I was in Sevastopol, where I was able to visit an American Navy ship. I was able to visit, but also many Ukrainians were able to visit, both civilians and Ukrainian Navy. People were there to get a tour of the ship, to talk with the sailors, and to compare their training and the American training. Two ships, an American ship and a Ukrainian ship, went out and did exercises together, worked together, in the Black Sea. Their work in the naval exercises laid the groundwork, set the stage for further work in the Mediterranean where the Ukrainian Navy and the NATO navies are working close together.

The last thing was another trip, actually to the Western part of this country, to Lviv. I had an opportunity then to visit what essentially is the Ukrainian military academy. I enjoyed this visit. I had an opportunity to talk with the cadets, talk with the staff, talk with the leadership. It made me think of my time at the United States Military Academy. So this was a good opportunity for me, and a great opportunity to see the new facilities that are available to the cadets who will soon join the officers of the Ukrainian military.

The other opportunity I had in Lviv was to go out to a small village out to the West of Lviv right on the Polish border. This village is the home of a school that is working closely with an American firm, an American company, UPS. UPS is an American company that delivers packages around the world, and it has decided to work with this village school in the far reaches of Ukraine on the Polish border, and with the Polish school just across the border in Poland, to link them up through computers.

This didn't used to be necessary. It used to be that people in one village in Ukraine could walk down the street and talk to the people in the other village in Poland, but that's not possible today. The border crossing is closed. Poland is a member of the European Union. The borders now have to be monitored, so there are fewer border crossings, and the people in this Ukrainian village have to go an hour and a half down the border to the closest border crossing that remains open, cross the border, and then an hour and a half back to visit their friends in this small Polish town right across the border.

What the UPS project has done with the schools in both villages is link up the people so that they can maintain their friendships, the students can maintain their relationships, they are able to have the opportunity to talk to each other on a regular basis. This is an important thing for the schools, an important thing for the development of that region.

I hope that at some point soon, in the not too distant future, that border will be open again. I hope that Ukraine will be a member of the European Union, and those two villages will be reunited in a way that reminds everyone how close Europe is, and how Ukraine is a member of Europe as a whole.

So with that, thank you very much, and I look forward to talking with you again next time.