Lukashenko-Yushchenko meeting is up in the air :: Charter'97 :: News

Aleksandr Lukashenko and Viktor Yushchenko are unlikely to meet in the near future, suggests Ukraine`s media spotlight on Tuesday`s visit of Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov to Belarus.

On Tuesday, Mr. Yekhanurov delivered the Belarusian leader an invitation for a meeting from the Ukrainian president, according to the Kommersant Ukraina. The invitation reportedly said nothing about the place of the meeting.

The Ukrainian premier expressed hope that the meeting would occur before the end of the year, noting that the presidents would definitely meet by April 26, 2006, the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

According to the newspaper, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk said earlier that the two leaders would meet in October.

"We have scheduled so many meetings for October that it is simply impossible now to add more," the Uriadovy Kuryer quotes Mr. Yekhanurov as saying.

According to the Ukraina Moloda, the premier "promised" that Mr. Yushchenko would meet with his Belarusian counterpart the following year.

"The heads of state of Ukraine and Belarus have not met for years, although both sides have constantly used phrases about `friends` and `good-neighborly friendship` in their political rhetoric," says the Ukraina Moloda, which is edited by Mikhail Doroshenko, a non-staff adviser to Mr. Yushchenko, who is from the same village as the Ukrainian president.