Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, in an exclusive interview with AFP ahead of his visit to Brussels on Monday, said Kiev would settle for nothing less than the opening of accession talks with the European Union as of 2007.

Ukraine's new leader said his talks with European Union officials would focus on securing a start date for formal negotiations aimed at bringing the former Soviet nation into the EU fold.

"The most important thing is for the negotiating process to begin," he said, speaking in Russian and Ukrainian.

The EU is due to adopt an "action plan" for Ukraine during Yushchenko's visit, laying out a series of benefits the EU intends to offer the country, but stopping short of evoking its hope one day to join the 25-member bloc.

Yushchenko told AFP he wanted assurances that EU entry negotiations similar to those launched with Turkey would begin with Ukraine in 2007, when the action plan is due to expire.

"I suggest we complete the action plan with a very important clause stipulating that, as of 2007, we will start negotiating with a view to Ukraine's entry into the European Union," Yushchenko said.

He warned that "the documents must not result in us stopping midway, without prospects for the future.

"The key is that all this construction should lay open, irrevocably, the path for us to be integrated into Europe," Yushchenko said, while stressing that Kiev was "ready to wait the time it takes... years, even decades."

"We understand that along its path towards joining the European Union, Ukraine will have to follow a series of logical steps. That is why we do not intend to focus discussions on the question of when Ukraine will join Europe.

"I am not going to ask that question in Brussels, because I know that is not where the answer lies. The answer to that question is to be found in Kiev.

"Specifically, it depends on the actions and political will of the Kiev government" to meet the standards set for EU membership, Yushchenko said during the interview, at his official residence in Kiev.

"Deciding on the exact form that membership will take -- full membership or associate status -- or on the year of entry, are details that will be dealt with as part of the negotiating process."

Yushchenko's four-day visit to Brussels will be the first since he finally took office late last month after a two-month political crisis sparked by rigged elections.

The Ukrainian leader insisted that to deny his country the chance to join the EU would dash the hopes of the millions of Ukrainians who backed his Western-leaning programme, taking to the streets to ensure democracy prevailed.

A handful of enthusiastic supporters, wrapped in the trademark coloured scarves of Yushchenko's so-called orange revolution, were still posted outside the president's residence as he spoke Thursday night.

Concerning the possibility of joining NATO, which is on the agenda of the president's talks with his US counterpart George W. Bush in Brussels on Tuesday, Yushchenko remained cautious.

He warned that Ukrainian society was not ready to become part of an alliance that was vilified for decades by Ukraine's leaders as an instrument of US imperialism.

"We can fantasise, sat comfortably in an armchair, and say that, yes, our goal is to become part of the Atlantic alliance. Fundamentally, that is true. But if we come out and say so now... it will not make the idea more popular."

On the domestic front, Yushchenko said that the government would reexamine the privatisation of 30 to 40 top businesses -- a far lower figure than the one put forward by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko earlier this week.

Tymoshenko said on Wednesday that her government would challenge privatisations of about 3,000 enterprises and would renationalise those judged to have been sold off unfairly under the previous regime.

Analysts have speculated that the huge discrepancy between the numbers of businesses cited by Yushchenko and his prime minister reflected a "good-cop, bad-cop" approach from the country's new leaders.

Finally, asked about the mysterious poisoning incident which left him disfigured in the run-up to Ukraine's presidential election last year, Yushchenko vowed that the truth would be known "soon, soon", but did not elaborate.

Doctors who treated Yushchenko in Vienna have said he had been poisoned with a large dose of dioxin and that they suspected a third party had been involved.

There has been suspicion that Yushchenko was poisoned during a secret dinner in September with the head of the country's secret services, while he was campaigning for the presidency.