REUTERS - Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko on Friday praised a European Union decision which
paves the way for final agreement on a cooperation accord
between Ukraine and
the bloc.
The accord
still needs to overcome reservations on the part of the Netherlands. But Kiev
believes that the so-called association agreement will help the former Soviet
republic move closer to Europe and away from Moscow's orbit.
"It is a
necessary step to achieve our common goal -– to secure the association
agreement," Poroshenko said in a post on social media.
EU leaders
agreed on Thursday to spell out limits to the agreement with Ukraine to address
Dutch concerns and prevent the deal from unravelling.
The leaders
agreed it did not make Ukraine a candidate for EU membership, and did not
entitle Kiev to financial aid or military assistance from the bloc. Neither did
it give Ukrainians the right to live and work in the 28-nation union.
The
Netherlands is the only EU country that has yet to ratify the deal, which would
become void without its endorsement.
By imposing caveats
on the deal, Prime Minister Mark Rutte aims to ease the concerns of Dutch
voters, who rejected it in a referendum in April. Rutte will now take
Thursday's agreement to the Dutch parliament in an attempt to win its approval
and overwrite the referendum result.
"We call
upon the Netherlands to fulfil the relevant procedures to ensure its swift
entry into force," Poroshenko said.
Ukraine
considers the agreement a symbol of the country's future direction, 25 years
after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A pro-Russian president in Kiev was
toppled by street protests in 2014 after he tried to ditch the EU accord in
favor of a deal with Moscow.
Russia
responded by annexing Ukraine's peninsula of Crimea and went on to back a
separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that has killed nearly
10,000 people to date.
REUTERS
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