American and British airstrikes on Iraq provoked an outcry in Ukraine on Thursday, with the Foreign Ministry condemning the action and parliament apparently preparing to do the same.
The Foreign Ministry issued a statement demanding an immediate end to the bombing and calling on the United Nations Security Council to ‘do everything possible’ to prevent further military action.
The United States and Britain launched air and missile strikes against Iraq on Wednesday in response to Saddam Hussein’s refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.
The Foreign Ministry said Ukraine consistently advocates the use of peaceful means to settle all conflicts and ‘cannot accept the use of force’ in Iraq, which it said could bring ‘unpredictable consequences in the region and the entire world.’
The ministry suggested the United States and Britain were usurping the authority of the U.N. Security Council. There was no immediate reaction from Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who was due to return to Kyiv after a two-day visit to Macedonia late on Thursday.
‘The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry believes it necessary … to remind that it is precisely the Security Council that bears the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security,’ the Interfax news agency quoted the statement as saying.
The statement also deplored the casualties inflicted by the strikes and expressed concern for the safety of international experts staying on Iraqi territory. The Foreign Ministry requested the Russian and Polish Foreign Ministries to instruct their embassies in Iraq to assist Ukrainian citizens in evacuation from Iraq.
Interfax said the U.S. and British ambassadors had been summoned to the ministry to receive ‘appropriate explanations.’
Meanwhile, Interfax reported that more than one Verkhovna Rada committee on Thursday was working on a parliamentary statement condemning the strikes and calling for a peaceful settlement of the conflict and immediate examination of the situation by the U.N.
Georgy Kryuchkov, the Communist chairman of parliament’s Defense and National Security Committee, told Interfax the attack was ‘extremely dangerous’ because it was launched ‘not only in the absence of proven facts of violations by Iraq of the agreements reached, but at a time when the U.N. Security Council was examining a report on the situation in Iraq.
‘It is not accidental that Germany and France have refused to participate in the American and British action, and China and Russia have strongly condemned it,’ Kryuchkov said.
Kryuchkov said he agreed with the many American politicians who have accused U.S. President Bill Clinton of launching the attack to destract attention from impeachment proceedings and the failure of his peace mission in Israel.
‘But raising one’s [popularity] rating through crude flouting of the norms of international law makes a very dangerous precedent,’ Kryuchkov said.
Ivan Zayets, first deputy chairman of parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a member of the nationalist Rukh party, told Interfax that ‘problems of such a scale should be settled through peaceful means’ and worried that, if hostility escalates, it could do ‘considerable damage to international peace and stability.’
Previously, the Communist and Green factions in parliament had demanded that the Foreign Ministry condemn the attacks and ordered the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee to draw up a draft parliamentary statement.
A Communist Party statement read to parliament on Thursday said there was ‘no justification or pretext’ for the use of military force and said Turkey’s participation made possible the ‘spreading of the war to the Black Sea region.’
