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Ukraine not ready to join Eurasian Economic Community – President Yanukovich

“We are looking closely at this economic association, but is not an easy path and it takes a great political will to travel it,” he said
Photo ITAR-TASS
Photo ITAR-TASS

KIEV, March 19 (Itar-Tass) —— Ukraine is not yet ready to join the Eurasian Economic Community, or EurAsEC, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich said on Sunday.

“We are looking closely at this economic association, but is not an easy path and it takes a great political will to travel it,” he said in an interview with Itar-Tass. “We hail our neighbours taking this path, but we are not yet ready to give a definite answer.”

“It is an integration process but Ukraine has dropped from it for about five years, maybe, even for a bigger period. And since we are lagging behind so much we do not understand how to join this process from the point of view of procedure, it means we are not yet certain about the terms,” he said.

“We did not take part in the preparation of documents and are not ready to say to which extent they meet our national interests, and what the result may be,” he went on. “Maybe some time later, we will see the result, at least a preliminary result, to make up our minds what is might give the states, and how it might influence their sovereignty.”

“One of the questions is the creation of supra-national bodies,” Yanukovich noted. “It will deprive us a part of our sovereignty, which is prohibited by the constitution. There different ways to solve this issue, i.e. to amend the constitution, to hold a referendum, and so on. But in order to take this path, we need to see the result, let alone the ultimate goal. There must be a goal, and it must meet the national interests. So far we cannot say that and this is the problem. It means that in order to take the path of integration we got to have grounds and so far they are lacking, we do not see any.”