EU offers to hold Ukraine donor talks in July

(BRUSSELS) - The EU is ready to organise talks next month to set up a donors' conference for the new government in Ukraine, European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso said on Wednesday.

Barroso announced the decision at the opening of a G7 leaders summit, where Ukraine and reinforcing Eastern Europe against a resurgent Russia will dominate the agenda.

"We stand ready to organise a donors' coordination meeting in Brussels in July," Barroso said, adding that the EU would do whatever it could to encourage democracy in the region.

"We say that when people are given a real choice they always choose democracy," Barroso said only hours after US President Barack Obama, also in Brussels for the summit, met with Ukraine's newly elected leader Petro Poroshenko in Warsaw.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, also speaking at the opening of the G7 summit, said he was going to attend the inauguration ceremony for Poroschenko on Saturday.

"Destabilisation is also a threat to Georgia and Moldova," Van Rompuy added, in a veiled reference to the threat of Kremlin meddling in countries bordering Russia.

"Association Agreements with both will be signed in Brussels ahead of the European Council meeting on the 27th of June," he added.

It was a similar association agreement, reneged on last minute by Kiev under pressure from Moscow, that precipitated the worst crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War late last year.