Friday, October 07, 2005

NATO to Ukraine: Do. Don't Talk.

NATO on Friday urged Ukraine's overhauled government to stop talking about its hopes of joining the alliance and the European Union and get on with turning itself into a strong democracy.

While the EU is seen as reticent about any further enlargement, some in NATO believe Kiev could receive an invitation as early as 2008 to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [emphasis added] -- but provided it sees through political and defence reforms.

"The key message this morning was: 'Actions speak louder than words'," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters after talks with new Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov, on his maiden visit to Brussels.

The message was strikingly similar to that delivered by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso on Thursday, who urged Kiev "not to talk all the time about (EU) membership but to achieve concrete results".


Read more here.

Ukraine's gotta beat that corruption down. Otherwise, it'll languish on the frontiers of the West and forever be the other side of the border borderland. The only ones who can do that reform are, well, the Ukrainians.



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