EU TO HELP TIGHTEN UKRAINIAN-MOLDOVAN BORDER

EU High Commissioner for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana discussed EU-Ukrainian relations with President Viktor Yushchenko and other high-ranking Ukrainian officials in Kyiv on 19 July.

Solana said in Kyiv that he believes Ukraine will soon be recognized as a market economy. Solana also promised Yushchenko that the EU will help Ukraine thwart smuggling through the Transdniestrian stretch of the Ukrainian-Moldovan border. In a letter from European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso that Solana brought to Kyiv, Brussels obliged itself to send a "fact-finding mission to review the situation in the border area itself and prepare our engagement." Yushchenko and Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin asked the EU in June for help in establishing more effective customs controls and surveillance on the Transdniestrian section of their common border.