Solana to visit Ukraine

Announcement from the Council of European Union website:

Javier SOLANA,
EU High Representative for the CFSP,
to visit Ukraine
26 November 2004

Javier SOLANA, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, will travel to Kiev on Friday 26 November 2004. He will have meetings with President Kuchma as well as Prime Minister Yanukovich and opposition leader Yushchenko to try to assist in the identification of a way out of the current crisis following the second round of presidential elections.
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Meeting on 22 November, EU Foreign Ministers discussed the situation in Ukraine after the run-off of the presidential election. The Presidency noted after this discussion that the European Union had followed the second round of elections with great concern; that the EU had on several occasions urged the Ukrainian authorities to observe democratic principles so that the second round of elections could be free and fair; that the second round of elections had clearly fallen short of international standards and that in view of the irregularities detailed in the OSCE/ ODIHR report the EU seriously questioned whether the official results would fully reflected the will of the Ukrainian electorate. Since then, the EU has continued to follow the electoral process in Ukraine closely.
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