BEIJING, November 18 – Ukraine’s president, Leonid Kuchma, began a three-day trip to China on Monday to drum up support for his request that U.N. inspectors verify that his government did not transfer radar systems to Iraq. Kuchma, who arrived in Beijing on Sunday, spent part of the morning at the National Defense Science Committee, which gave a 20-minute slide presentation of China’s defense industry.
“One thing that we need to point out is that military cooperation between the two sides has entered a newer, higher stage of technology,” Kuchma said in a short address later. He was also scheduled to meet commerce officials and sign a series of bilateral agreements, including aviation deals, a satellite launch project and construction services in the energy sector. Trade between the two countries totaled $800 million last year.
In the evening, President Jiang Zemin has arranged for a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People. Kuchma has been dogged by allegations that he approved the sale of the sophisticated Kolchuha radar system to Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions. He has denied the accusations, which arose after U.S. authorities said they had verified the authenticity of a recording in which the Ukrainian president is allegedly heard approving the $100 million sale.
China is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and Ukraine is seeking approval for its request that the United Nations send a team of arms experts to look into the alleged radar sale, according to a report by the ITAR-Tass news agency. Last month, a U.S.-British team of investigators visited Ukraine to look into the radar allegations but said they had been stonewalled by Ukrainian officials.
In a news conference last week in response to the incident, Viktor Medvedchuk, Kuchma’s chief of staff, said Ukraine “provided all necessary documents, but unfortunately U.S. experts were not satisfied with that.” He also acknowledged Ukraine had sold four Kolchuha systems to China in “a commercial secret not only of Ukraine, but of China too.” Medvedchuk, saying he was deferring to China’s strategic interests, refused to disclose the locations of Kolchuhas.
Kuchma arrived in Beijing one day after he fired the cabinet of Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh in a move analysts said was likely to aggravate simmering political tensions that have paralyzed the government for months. The discord was sparked in March, when opposition parties won the most votes in parliamentary elections but failed to form a working majority. In September, tens of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets calling for Kuchma’s resignation, accusing him of corruption and linking him to the unsolved murder of an investigative journalist.
