Ukraine-EU stuck on agreement

Ukraine and the European Union, which were set to initiate an association agreement on Friday, will only finalize about one tenth of the 1,700-page document, Kommersant Ukraine reported. It remained unclear what prompted the delay to the initialing procedure, during which parties to a treaty agree on the document’s text, declaring it ready for official signing. The EU is afraid Kiev will incorrectly market the agreement to Ukrainians as a formal signing, which would be a major diplomatic success for President Viktor Yanukovych, when it is actually just a technical procedure, an unidentified European diplomat was cited as saying. The document, which will introduce a free trade zone between the European Union and Ukraine, will only be edited for terms and technicalities, a Ukrainian diplomat, also unnamed, told Kommersant for a story published Friday. The entire treaty is expected to be agreed upon by September and then it will be translated into the 23 languages of the EU, all of whom will have to approve of the deal. This will take at least five or six months, making it unlikely that the treaty will be signed in 2012, the report said. Neither Brussels nor Kiev has officially commented on the report on Friday. Ukraine first declared its objective to join the EU in 1994 but progress has been very slow. So far, Ukraine is only a member of the Eastern Partnership, a European program that proposes economic integration and political cooperation but offers no guarantees of accession to the EU. EU-Ukrainian relations have been damaged by last year’s jailing of Yanukovych’s political nemesis, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, over a gas deal with Russia, which was declared harmful to Ukraine. European authorities have declared Tymoshenko’s trial politically motivated and have called for her to be released.