Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 12, 1991 TAG: 9102120037
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: KIEV, U.S.S.R. LENGTH: Medium
U.S. officials, wary of stirring trouble for President Mikhail Gorbachev, say the consulate's opening does not mean diplomatic recognition or support for an independent Ukraine, the second most populous of the 15 Soviet republics.
"It's not our policy to confer recognition if the matter hasn't been resolved by the Soviets themselves," said a Western diplomat in Moscow who spoke on condition he not be identified.
U.S. officials note that if the Soviet Union had not invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the building might have opened a decade ago, when few people could conceive of Ukrainian secession.
France and Germany, which already have consulates in Kiev, also have remained neutral in the fray over independence.
Behind the diplomatic tiptoeing, however, is a clear U.S. recognition that the Ukraine is an industrial and agricultural powerhouse of 52 million people whose future is important to the West.
If it breaks away from the Soviet Union, it will be Europe's largest country in territory and fifth-largest in population, after Germany, Italy, Britain and France.
Ukrainian independence activists welcome the opening of Western missions.
"Without question, we need Western contacts," said poet Ivan Drach, chairman of the Rukh independence movement. "We particularly need people who are here permanently, who can see and understand what is going on, because truth and knowledge are our only weapons."
The U.S. State Department originally decided to open the consulate in the 1970s in an exchange that involved opening a Soviet consulate in New York. It sent a 15-person advance team to Kiev and invested about $1 million in renovations to three buildings for offices and housing.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, however, President Carter retaliated by cutting off government-sponsored exchanges, boycotting the Moscow Olympics and canceling plans for the consulate.
After Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and U.S.-Soviet relations warmed, plans for the consulate were renewed. But the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, security concerns heightened by the alleged bugging of the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and reciprocal limits on U.S. and Soviet diplomatic staff delayed the project.
In the last year, as the Ukrainian independence movement has grown, the United States has been pushing again to open the consulate.
by CNB