EU offers Ukraine closer ties but no membership pledge
Barroso-Sarkozy-Yushchenko - Photo EU Presidency
(PARIS) - Ukraine on Tuesday took a step toward closer ties with the European Union but failed to win a pledge of membership in the bloc at a Paris summit overshadowed by the Russia-Georgia conflict.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the EU presidency, said an association agreement between Ukraine and the EU would be reached next year, laying the groundwork but not guaranteeing entry in the bloc.
"This association accord does not close any avenues," Sarkozy said at a joint news conference with Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yushchenko at the Elysee presidential palace in Paris.
"It is the maximum that we could do and I believe that it is already an essential step," he said.
The 27-nation EU is divided on whether to invite Ukraine to join the bloc, with France and Germany expressing reservations while Britain, Poland and the Baltic states lobbied for its eventual membership.
Ukraine sees entry in the EU and NATO as key to anchor it to Europe -- and away from Moscow's orbit -- and has stepped up its campaign after Russia sent troops into Georgia last month.
Yushchenko hailed the EU-Ukraine summit as "historic" and the "most productive" yet and suggested that membership was within sight.
"It is a first step in the long road taken since the 1990s by all the states who have become members of the Union," said the pro-Western president who has sided with Georgia in the standoff with Russia over two separatist regions.
Sarkozy voiced strong EU backing for Ukraine's territorial integrity.
"In the eyes of Europe, it is absolutely non-negotiable," he said.
Despite the move to support Ukraine, Sarkozy cautioned that Russia had not shown any signs of threatening its eastern neighbour, which is home to a large ethnic Russian minority.
"In the discussions that we held yesterday in Moscow, there was nothing that would allow me to think that this was a problem," he said after returning from trips to Moscow and Tbilisi.
Ukraine has also stepped up calls for Russia to prepare to pull its Black Sea fleet from its base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Under a current accord, the fleet will leave Ukraine in 2017.
For his part, Yushchenko urged the EU to take action to promote stability in the region, saying that the Georgia-Russia conflict "showed that the Black Sea region lacks an adequate security mechanism."
On Monday Russia promised to withdraw from the rest of Georgia in a deal brokered by a European delegation headed by Sarkozy.
The deal envisaged the pull-back of all Russian troops from Georgia apart from South Ossetia and Abkhazia within a month and the deployment of 200 EU observers to join 220 other international monitors on the ground.
The EU and Ukraine expressed "grave concern" over the Russia-Georgia conflict and called for a peaceful resolution based on "full respect for the principles of independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity," according to a joint declaration.
"We need cool heads in Europe, and not a Cold War," said European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso.
The Paris summit was moved at the last moment from the French town of Evian following delays in Sarkozy's trip to Moscow and Tbilisi.
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