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Minister says Ukraine does not have enough support for joining NATO

country’s interim acting foreign minister indicated that Ukraine did not have the necessary legislative basis for joining the North-Atlantic pact

Ukrainian interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (L) and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen (R) during a press conference after a meeting at the NATO headquarters Brussels EPA/JULIEN WARNAND

Ukrainian interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (L) and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen (R) during a press conference after a meeting at the NATO headquarters Brussels

© EPA/JULIEN WARNAND

BRUSSELS, March 22. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine’s accession to NATO is off the agenda in the short term, the country’s interim acting foreign minister Andrei Deshchitsya said here Thursday.

He indicated that Ukraine did not have the necessary legislative basis for joining the North-Atlantic pact and, what is more, it did not have enough public support for starting the accession process.

Deshchtsya also said that, in addition to it, he did not think NATO member-states were prepared to consider Ukraine as an accession candidate in the current situation.

On the whole, Deshchitsya voiced the confidence that the Ukrainian government would continue moving towards European integration. “We feel deep at heart we’re Europeans,” he said adding along with it that normalization of relations with Russia was one of the current foreign policy priorities.

One can presuppose that Ukraine will undergo the process of ‘finlandization’, as Finland is a member of the EU but still it has very good relations with Russia. Ukraine would also like to have this kind of relations with Moscow, Deshchitsya said.

Ukraine’s interim acting prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk said in an interview with Reuters Thursday NATO countries would have scarcely agreed to opening to doors of the alliance to Kiev even if it had asked them to do so.

Yatsenyuk said he remembered very well the events of 2008 when a NATO summit in Bucharest failed to take a decision on Ukraine’s possible future status in NATO.

The country missed its chance in 2008, he said.

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