Ukraine Switches Signals Again on Nuclear Weapons

A top Ukrainian official denied Thursday that President Leonid Kravchuk had reversed his decision to halt the removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Ukraine to Russia.

Kravchuk announced last week that his government would not send any more tactical nuclear weapons to Russia because Russia was not dismantling them. But news reports from Moscow on Wednesday said Kravchuk had backed down after speaking on the telephone with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

And North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials said in Brussels that they had received assurances from Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry that the transfer would be finished by July, as scheduled.

Asked about reports of Kravchuk’s talk with Yeltsin, Mykola Khomenko, the secretary of Kravchuk’s administration, said, “That’s a canard--not just a canard, but a bright-yellow canard.

“There was no conversation,” he said in an interview. “There was no (such) conversation between Kravchuk and Yeltsin. . . . The decision Kravchuk announced last week at the press conference was well-thought-out, and it has not been changed.”

Kravchuk’s press office also officially denied the report and confirmed that Ukrainian policy had not changed.

Valery Kuchynsky, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s expert on disarmament, said the letter he sent to NATO about the tactical nuclear weapons did not contradict Kravchuk’s statement but only explained it.

In principle, Ukraine still stands by its decision to send all tactical nuclear weapons to Russia by July 1, Kuchynsky said, but only if they are going to be dismantled.

“If they leave Ukraine, we don’t want them to be used,” he said.

The controversy over Ukrainian nuclear weapons is also certain to heighten already existing concerns in the West over the security of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.

Mary Mycio, a special correspondent in Kiev, contributed to this report.