Poland Fears Losing Influence In Ukraine

WARSAW, Poland -- Ukrainian Secretary of the National Security Council Raisa Bohatyriova will visit Poland today to meet with President Lech Kaczynski, head of the National Security Office, Foreign Minister and Minister of Defense.
The politicians will discuss security strategies drawn up at the NATO Summit in Strasbourg, the European Union’s European Partnership that Poland and Sweden have initiated and prospects of integrating energy security policies.Meanwhile, former political rivals, President Lech Kaczynski and former president Aleksander Kwasniewski met two weeks ago to discuss current political crisis in Ukraine, Dziennik reveals. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, strongly supported by Polish political elites during the so called Orange revolution in 2004, will soon step down. The parliament in Kiev has set the next presidential election for October.Yushchenko has declared, however, that he is ready to resign even sooner, if early parliamentary elections were held simultaneously.Opinion polls show clearly that both Yushchenko and his party has little chance to win a ballot held in the near future.. Polish politicians are worried, because Ukraine led by a new government will probably be more pro-Russian and less pro-European.The meeting between Kaczynski and Kwasniewski took place on 14 April, just a day before Kwasniewski’s visit to Kiev. The former president was invited by the Open Ukraine Foundation of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a former Ukrainian head of diplomacy.Kwasniewski made a speech on strategic perspectives of Ukraine and met with leading Ukrainian politicians, Dziennik reports.