Ukraine's new West-leaning leadership said Tuesday it wanted to start talks on accession to the European Union by 2007 as it distanced itself from a planned economic union with Russia and two other ex-Soviet republics.

Reinforcing the fast pace of change in Ukraine since the new cabinet took office last week after parliament overwhelmingly approved "orange revolution" firebrand Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister, the government also moved to reassess past sell-offs of state assets.

Newly-appointed Ukrainian Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk told journalists in Kiev that the former Moscow satellite wanted Brussels to accept it as a candidate for EU membership within the next three years.

"We have a three-year action plan (with the EU) and we can speak about starting negotiations at the end of this period, in other words 2007," Tarasyuk told journalists.

He added that he expected the bloc to officially recognize "in the second half of this year (...) the prospect of Ukraine's accession to the EU."

Ukraine's top diplomat also said that Kiev was hoping to join the US-led NATO military alliance before its entry into the EU, recalling that several other former Soviet bloc countries in eastern Europe had done the same.

"I think that Ukraine will not be an exception," he said.

In another sign to neighboring Russia of the shifting allegiances in its former backyard, Ukraine's new US-born justice minister said in a newspaper interview that the country was reassessing plans to join a planned Moscow-led Common Economic Space (CES).

Justice Minister Roman Zvarich told the Russian daily Izvestia he "can't imagine" how Ukraine's laws could simultaneously meet requirements for joining Russia and two other ex-Soviet republics in a unified economic space and conform with western European norms.

The project to create a new economic union between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan on the ashes of the former Soviet Union has been pitched for years by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a major strategic goal.

The new leadership in Ukraine, swept to power on a wave of popular revolt against the former pro-Russia regime there, has made clear its goal is to join the club of European democracies.

"It won't do to flip back and forth between the West and the East -- that's nonsense," Zvarich said, adding: "Our strategic aim is European integration."

However, Ukraine and its Soviet-inherited industry remains heavily dependent on energy imports from Russia, its biggest trading partner.

And reflecting enlargement weariness after the entry of 10 mainly former Communist eastern European states last year and the prospect of possible Turkish membership, the EU has stopped short of offering Ukraine candidate status.

The new Yushchenko government has made fighting poverty and corruption a top priority and the prime minister said Tuesday that the prosecutor general's office is to verify the "legality" of all privatizations by February 14.

Tymoshenko announced on Saturday the renationalization of the country's main Krivorozhstal steelworks which were sold off amid controversy in June to two businessmen including the son-in-law of then president Leonid Kuchma.

The new interior minister, Socialist Yury Lutsenko, a veteran street protestor, has also pledged within two months to purge the police of its "dishonest" elements.