Ukrainian President To Visit Prague Next Week

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s visit to the Czech Republic is scheduled on March 24-25, 2009. He will be accompanied by his spouse. Mr. Yushchenko is invited to visit Prague by Czech President Vaclav Klaus. The leaders will have a private meeting during which they cam discuss some matters of mutual importance.

It is still uncertain whether Ukrainian President will meet Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek whose spokeswoman Jana Bartosova informs that Mr. Topolanek's schedule for the coming week do not include any planned events confined to Ukrainian leader’s visit.

Recently Mr. Topolanek as prime minister of the country holding the EU rotating presidency and Mr. Yushchenko already discussed problems that had arisen in connection with Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute in the beginning of this year. As a result, some European Union member-countries were deprived of gas supplies.

In total Russia supplies into EU countries about 20 percent of their natural gas consumption and the bulk of the gas is delivered through the territory of Ukraine. And some EU members are almost totally dependent on Russian supplies. The European Union blames both Ukraine and Russia for failing to deliver prepaid amount.

One more priority matter of possible discussion is Ukraine’ s membership in the EU Eastern Partnership program, which is destined to make easier free trade deals, strategic partnership and visas agreements with number of former Soviet Union republics situated in Eastern Europe and South Caucasus, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus. The project is expected to be officially launched at the EU summit in Prague on May 7, 2009.

Photo: Viktor Yushchenko, by Muumi (wikimedia.org)