Kuchma says he will attend summit in defiance of Nato
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Your support makes all the difference.The Ukrainian President, Leonid Kuchma, has said he will attend this week's Nato summit, defying an official declaration that he would not be welcome because Ukraine allegedly sold weaponry to Iraq.
Mr Kuchma had initially threatened a full-scale boycott of the meeting in Prague on Thursday. But his spokeswoman, Olena Hromnytska, has now insisted that "Kuchma will go" to represent Ukraine at the 46-nation meeting of countries that have partnership agreements with Nato and the 19 members of the bloc itself.
The alliance says that, while Ukraine was informed of the meeting, Mr Kuchma was not sent a personal invitation. Yves Brodeur, a Nato spokesman, said: "We still think it would be very unwise for President Kuchma to come to Prague."
After several years in which Nato has overlooked human rights abuses and cultivated a security relationship with Ukraine, Mr Kuchma is becoming too much of an embarrassment. Washington claims he approved the sale of a Kolchuga early-warning aircraft detection system to Iraq in breach of UN sanctions – an accusation denied by Kiev. Last year, Ukraine upset the alliance, which is heavily involved in peace-keeping in the Balkans, by selling military equipment to Macedonia.
The Ukrainian opposition accuses Mr Kuchma of corruption, abuse of office, electoral fraud and involvement in the killing of an investigative journalist, Georgiy Gongadze, whose headless body was found in a forest two years ago.
At the weekend, Mr Kuchma sacked his cabinet, plunging the country into political crisis, before leaving for China to seek support for his request that UN inspectors verify his government did not transfer radar systems to Iraq.
The summit is intended to celebrate the modernisation of Nato, with seven more ex-Communist nations expected to be invited to join.
On Friday, a separate dispute was resolved when the Czech authorities denied a visa to Alexander Lukashenko, the President of Belarus, whose poor human rights record had left him increasingly isolated. Whether the Ukrainian President will be given a visa by the Czechs remains unclear.
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