KIEV, November 15 (Itar-Tass) — Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich will pay a state visit to Poland on Tuesday.
When in Wroclaw, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, German President Christian Wulff and Yanukovich will attend celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of Wroclaw University.
On the sidelines of the celebrations “the heads of state will discuss the current situation in relations among the three countries,” the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Sergei Levochkin, said.
Taking into account the fact that Poland is presiding over the European Union “it is evident that special focus will be given, first of all, to the signing of an association agreement between the European Union and Ukraine before the end of the year,” he said.
Earlier, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov asserted that Ukraine and the EU “have practically agreed” on concluding free trade and association agreements.
He noted that in the negotiating process Ukraine insists that the association agreement with the EU should fix prospects for Ukraine’s membership. However, at the talks in Brussels at the level of experts on November 11 Kiev allegedly refused from direct recording “of the European prospect in the preamble of Ukraine’s association agreement with the EU,” local media sources close to the negotiations said. Instead of this Ukraine expressed readiness to make a unilateral statement on its “European identity” and that “the association agreement’s end goal is Ukraine’s full-fledged membership of the EU.”
Earlier, the Ukrainian authorities and Foreign Ministry have repeatedly declared that there was no sense to sign the agreement if the European prospect was not clearly fixed in the document’s wording.
Peter Stano, a European Commission spokesman, said after the 21st round of talks in Brussels that the EU expects to finalize the deal as soon as the political situation in Ukraine becomes favourable.