Statement

The NATO-Ukraine Commission met in Ambassadorial session at NATO Headquarters on April 25, 2001. Members of the Commission welcomed the participation in the NUC meeting of H.E.Yevhen Marchuk, Secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council and H.E. Anatolii Orel, Deputy Head of the Administration of the President of Ukraine.

The Commission welcomed the adoption in January 2001 of the State Program of Cooperation of Ukraine with NATO for 2001-2004, and its presentation to the Commission, made by Mr. Marchuk.

The Commission noted that the Program is aimed at full and efficient implementation of the Ukraine-NATO Charter on a distinctive partnership, signed in Madrid in July 1997. The Commission noted a variety of promising new projects mentioned in the Program. In this context, the Commission considered that the recently established National Coordinators will become a helpful tool to further deepen the NATO-Ukraine Distinctive Partnership in general and defense reform in particular.

The Commission noted that NATO-Ukraine consultations cooperation in the political sphere aims, inter alia, at promoting stability and security as well as democratic values and freedoms, human rights, the rule of law in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Euro-Atlantic area as a whole.