... in response to I can't find anything on this story.. It..., posted by Oscar on Sep 24, 2002raine, Belarus defend Iraq ties, fear isolation
By Elizabeth Piper
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine and Belarus, frantically trying to halt their increasing isolation from the West, on Tuesday denied U.S. allegations that their ex-Soviet arms stockpiles were being used to help Iraq amass weapons.
Washington said late Monday it had stopped tens of millions of dollars in aid to Ukraine over an allegation that Kiev sold Iraq a "Kolchuga" system, which tracks moving objects on the ground and in the air when they emit radar signals.
The allegation prompted Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, already under pressure from opposition protests, to call on U.S. officials to examine Kiev's deals with Baghdad.
Neighboring Belarus too denied alleged involvement in arms trade with Iraq.
Both former Soviet states, on the eastern fringes of an expanding European Union, have played host to and struck deals with numerous Iraqi delegations in recent months, impervious to U.S. efforts to build a consensus for an attack against Baghdad.
The leaders insist they have not broken U.N. sanctions, imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
"Ukraine is ready to pass over all its information (on deals with Iraq) and is ready to be checked by competent representatives of international bodies, including U.S. experts," Kuchma said in a statement.
Kuchma, struggling to defend himself from allegations of corruption and involvement in the murder of a reporter, has repeatedly denied months of talk about the alleged transfer to Iraq of the Ukraine-made "Kolchuga" system.
Monday's announcement by the U.S. government comes after it authenticated part of a tape recording in which an aide tells Kuchma Iraq wanted to buy four such systems.
The recording was made by a former Kuchma bodyguard who has been granted asylum in the United States.
ISOLATION
Ukraine's opposition, which Tuesday led 5,000 people onto to the streets of the capital to demand Kuchma resign, warned that Washington's move would further isolate the country.
"This is very serious," Volodymyr Filenko, a member of the Our Ukraine opposition party, told Reuters.
"It is bound to push Ukraine into political isolation, which will bring serious economic, and then social, problems."
Kuchma, whose eight-year rule has seen Ukraine buffeted by scandals and economic stagnation, has had his efforts to follow neighbor Russia's pro-Western stance largely rebuffed, with the European Union refusing to consider membership.
NATO considers Ukraine a "strategic partner" but wants Kiev to reform its armed forces before being accepted as a full member. Washington's move to put on hold $55 million, earmarked for 2002, is a further blow.
"This is a diplomatic step to pressure Kuchma," Julia Tymonshenko, one of Ukraine's most charismatic opposition leaders, said.
Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko, whose Soviet-style governance has prompted U.S. officials to call him Europe's last dictator, has boasted of his close ties with Iraq but said he would not break the U.N.'s Security Council resolution.
"We are not a country of such potential and strength that we could contradict the opinion of the world community. We cannot cooperate with Iraq....because this a forbidden direction," Lukashenko said in an interview in Minsk with the British Broadcasting Corporation Monday.
The U.S. State Department said earlier this year it had evidence that Belarus, shunned by much of the world over human rights abuses, had trained Iraqi military personnel and smuggled arms. It has hinted at possible sanctions against Minsk.
09/24/02 10:07 ET
