At the ministerial meeting of the Euro- Atlantic Partnership Council Brussels, 17 Dec. 1997

Statement by H.E.Mr.Anton Buteiko, First Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Review of the EAPC work. Since the time of preparation and establishment of the EAPC, Ukraine has regarded the activities of this newly created structure as an important component of new security architecture in Europe in which every country will find is appropriate place according to their wish and abilities. Therefore, since the door to NATO is open, it may serve as preparatory forum for those who wish to join NATO. In this context I would like to congratulate our friends from Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic with the signature of the Protocol of allow them smoothly join NATO. We endorse Action plan of the EAPC for 1998-2000, and believe that it may serve as a solid basis for further EAPC activities. The document is realistic and result-oriented. We are pleased to see that one of the first events to take place in 1998 is the EAPC seminar in Kyiv on "Resource Management in Defense Spending" (February 1998). I would like to use this opportunity to invite the Allies and Partners to take an active part in this event. Ukraine is also particularly interested in participating in the implementation of the project of establishing a Euro-Atlantic disaster response capability (EADRC), initiated by the Russian Federation. In this regard Ukraine considers that EADRC should be multinational and resource-sparing, not-duplicating other fora. We welcome the readiness of the UN Department on humanitarian operations to participate in implementation of this project. Along with our positive assessment of the EAPC work and the Plan I would like to wish all of us and EAPC as a whole to be as productive and concrete as possible in whatever activities we may undertake next year. The reason for saying this is my impression that sometimes discussions within the EAPC, including ambassadorial meetings, tended to be more of formal rather than substantial nature. Hopefully, the Action plan would allow us to make our meetings more focused on the ways of resolving specific problems of Euro-Atlantic partnership, including wider involvement of partners in decision-making process. Ukraine welcomes the efforts within the EAPC on regional security problems. We believe that the discussions held on South Europe and Caucasus issues have given a good start to further exploring possible ways and forms of EAPC involvement in regional matters. We believe also that open-ended ad hoc working groups are an adequate format to proceed with development of practical tools to address regional problems. In this regard I would like to mention positive experience of regional consultations by Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. Ukraine consideres issues of peacekeeping one of priority fields where the EAPC can make its real practical contribution. In this context I would like to welcome the results achieved in developing the 'Lessons learned from peacekeeping operations' as well as in starting the work on developing the concept of NATO-led PFP peacekeeping operations. I believe that the experience of NATO-led operation in Bosnia deserves to be studied and applied throughout the EAPC area. Ukraine is also quite interested in implementation of the chapter of the Action plan on arms control, including CFE-related issues. I hope, Mr.Chairman, that in the process of implementation of the EAPC Plan it may be further improved and supplemented with possible new concrete initiatives. Ukraine also supports the idea of forwarding this Plan to the OSCE and WEU in order to provide better coordination between different tools and institutions in strengthening security and stability in Europe.