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EU-Ukraine summit in December to be marked by cold atmosphere

EU officials cannot give any guarantees that the current situation in relations between Kiev and Brussels will not affect the summit, European diplomatic source said

LONDON, November 8 (Itar-Tass) – A summit meeting between the EU and Ukraine, due in Kiev December 19, will take place on the condition that no new crisis breaks out in relations between the sides until then, a high-rank European diplomatic source said Monday.

EU officials cannot give any guarantees that the current situation in relations between Kiev and Brussels will not affect the summit and it is absolutely clear that the atmosphere there will be cold enough, he said.

In the meantime, a number of Western experts do not rule out that the summit may be cancelled eventually.

The EU has more than once made public its discontent with the trial of former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko and especially with the sentence that may keep her in jail for seven years.

Top-rank European officials have dismissed the trial as a politically motivated one.

A consequence of this could be seen in October when EU President Herman van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Baroso canceled their meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich in Brussels.

Simultaneously, the Ukrainian government has lowered expectations for the forthcoming summit by making it clear that the initialing of the EU-Ukraine Agreement on Association, initially timed for the event, may be put off.

European news portals quoted Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin as saying to reporters in Brussels on Monday: "For me, it /the summit/ is not about deliverables in a formal way ... We need a powerful statement, that we have concluded all the negotiations, but whether we initial it or not is less important."

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