KYIV. June 22 (Interfax) - Leonid Kuchma, Ukrainian Representative to the Trilateral Contact Group for Donbas and former Ukrainian President, believes the countries that pledged to guarantee Ukraine's security under the Budapest Memorandum should honor their obligations.
"The international community, first and foremost, the United States, should implement the Budapest Protocol and actually make [Russia] let Ukraine be a truly sovereign state. They have such mechanisms, but they should also demonstrate a wish," Kuchma said at the Baltic-Black Sea forum, 'Dawn of Europe: historical patterns of civilizational choice', in Kyiv on Thursday.
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in connection with Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), is an international document to guarantee observance of provisions of the Helsinki Final Act of the OSCE, the UN Charter and the NPT with regard to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear weapon state participating in the NPT. The memorandum was originally signed on December 5, 1994 by leaders of Ukraine, the U.S., Russia and United Kingdom.
France and China, the other two NPT signatories that possessed nuclear weapons by the time the Budapest Memorandum was signed, gave similar assurances by making respective statements though they did not endorse the memorandum.