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Leaders of European Parliament mission have two-hours meeting with Ukraine’s former PM

Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko is serving her seven-year jail term at a prison in Kharkov
Photo EPA/ UKRPRAVDA
Photo EPA/ UKRPRAVDA

KIEV, October 22 (Itar-Tass) - Leaders of the European Parliament monitoring mission, former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and former President of the European Parliament Pat Cox, on Tuesday met with the Ukrainian opposition leader and former Prime Minister of the country, Yulia Timoshenko, at the Kharkov-based clinic where she is undergoing treatment, a source close to Timoshenko said.

Kwasniewski and Cox spoke with the former Ukrainian prime minister for about two hours but refrained from any comment.

The European Parliament monitoring mission arrived in Ukraine on Monday, October 21 for more talks with Ukraine’s top political figures in a bid to settle outstanding issues needed for signing an association agreement with the European Union.

On October 15, Pat Cox, a member of the European Parliament responsible for monitoring the administration of justice in Ukraine, said that Ukraine had not fulfilled a number of conditions to be admitted as an associate member of the European Union. He said that after the 16 months of work and more than 20 visits to Ukraine, the mission had arrived at the conclusion that Ukraine had failed to fulfill the European Council’s requirements in the area of justice system reforms needed for the signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union. He also said Ukraine had failed to remedy the situation over selective justice, thus hinting to the litigations against Ukrainian former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko and her colleagues seen in the European Union as politically motivated.

In a bid to prove this fact and exert pressure on Ukraine, the European Parliament sent a monitoring mission to that country led by Aleksander Kwesniewski and Pat Cox in June 2012, just ahead of the European Football Cup. Initially, the mission was given two weeks but now, sixteen months since it has not yet finished its activity. The European Parliament has extended the mission’s term for one more months in a hope that by that time Kiev would have fulfilled all the requirements needed to have the Association Agreement signed in late November in Vilnius.

Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko is serving her seven-year jail term at a prison in Kharkov, Ukraine, for abuse of office while signing gas contracts with Russia in 2009. For over a year she has been in a hospital located in Kharkov.