BRUSSELS -- In hopes of finding a way to free imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, which would eliminate a major obstacle to Ukraine's closer integration with the European Union, the European Parliament on Oct .15 extended the mission of envoys Pat Cox and Alexander Kwasniewski to Ukraine until mid-November.
“We have extended the mission because its main goal is not achieved,” said Martin Martin Schulz head of the European Parliament, who conceived the idea of the mission more than a year ago.
Whether the extension is a sign of progress or desperation remains to be seen.
Cox, the former European Parliament president, and Kwasniewski, the former president of Poland, have visited Ukraine 22 times in the past 17 months to push for release of Tymoshenko.
While guarded in public comments, their latest mission report went online this week, along with a letter asking President Viktor Yanukovych to release Tymoshenko. The letter, drafted in close cooperation with the former prime minister, lays out options for her potential release.
“Cox and Kwasniewski have presented the letter in which a partial pardon is foreseen,” Schulz told the Kyiv Post. He said the letter will be passed on to the president “as soon as possible.”
Schultz said the letter that requests a partial pardon pushes the president to allow Tymoshenko “to leave the country for medical treatment after two years in jail. This is what we call, after two years in jail, a humanitarian contribution, to find a solution for a very delicate, interdependent diplomatic problem.”
A similar letter of appeal allowed the president in March to pardon Yuriy Lustenko, a former interior minister and close ally of Tymoshenko. “We want to use the same instrument to come to conclusion of the Tymoshenko case,” Schulz said.
So far, the president and his Party of Regions have not indicated that Tymoshenko’s release is imminent. The president, in his public speeches, has said that he and his team is devising a complex solution for the problem. Justice Minister Olena Lukash said on Oct. 15 that “today the president of Ukraine has no legal basis for signing a decree on pardon.”
But last week Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Rybak said “it was time for the parliament to consider what to do with those prisoners who are seriously ill and cannot be treated inside the state,” UNIAN news agency quoted him as saying.
“I think this law could actually be prepared. This, primarily, has to be done by the opposition, and, I think, the majority too,” he said.
Schulz said that Cox and Kwasniewski are working different parts of the political spectrum to achieve their goal.
“Pat is the interlocutor to one side of the political spectrum, Alexander to another side, but both men had achieved even more is trust of the relevant parties in Ukraine,” he said.
He said that the presidents have done an “enormous job not only to release Yulia Tymoshenko, but enormous job to improve relations between European Union and Ukraine.”
Schulz said he hoped the mission would report “what we hope will be a solution some days before the so-called Vilnius summit.”
Kwasniewski said he also hoped for a positive solution of the Tymoshenko case, but also has plenty of doubts.
“In my many years of work in Ukraine, I have come to the point when on Mondays, Wednesdays and Firdays I am optimistic. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays I am pessimistic, and on Sundays I am thinking what will happen next week,” said Kwasniewski.
Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at gorchinskaya@kyivpost.com
