Ukraine Agrees to Relinquish Nuclear Arms

After three years of agonized wrangling, the Ukrainian Parliament closed another Cold War chapter Wednesday by agreeing to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and surrender nuclear weapons forever.

However, lawmakers qualified their approval of the treaty by demanding that the United States, Britain, France and Russia sign an international agreement promising not to attack Ukraine militarily or economically after it dismantles its 1,800 nuclear warheads, the third-largest atomic arsenal in the world.

U.S. and Russian officials had lobbied hard to extract the agreement from a recalcitrant legislature that has long feared Ukraine’s problems will drop to the bottom of the world’s agenda once the former Soviet republic ceased to be a nuclear power.

Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma warned of financial ruin and political ostracism if lawmakers insisted on keeping the 176 missiles left on Ukrainian territory when the Soviet Union collapsed.

“What will the treaty give Ukraine?” Kuchma asked lawmakers. “A good reputation, which we don’t have now.”

The Parliament, or Rada, voted 301 to 8, with 20 abstentions, to join the 160 other countries that have already signed the non-proliferation treaty. The vote means that Kuchma will get a more sympathetic reception when he makes his first state visit to the United States next week and asks for more help in reviving Ukraine’s moribund economy.

U.S. Ambassador William Miller, who watched the voting from the Rada gallery, predicted that the vote “will clear the way for strengthening relations between the United States and Ukraine.”

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly applauded the ratification and said the Clinton Administration “takes a strong interest in Ukraine’s independence, its sovereignty and its existing borders.”

“We’re prepared to offer security assurances to Ukraine once it has acceded to the treaty,” Shelly said.

“We have, of course, very strongly supported and encouraged Ukraine’s accession to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state,” she said. “So we applaud the leadership exhibited by President Kuchma in bringing this very important treaty before the Rada.”

Russian officials also praised the treaty vote.

“Good news!” agreed Yuri Dubinin, Russia’s special envoy to Ukraine on nuclear issues.

Dubinin and others said the Ukrainian move should smooth negotiations that began Wednesday on other thorny Russian-Ukrainian problems, including dividing the Black Sea Fleet and payment of Ukraine’s huge energy debt to Russia.

The move allows the United States, Russia and Ukraine to begin downsizing their bloated post-Cold War nuclear arsenals. Moscow has refused to implement the strategic arms reduction treaty START I, which would cut its nuclear stockpile by a third, until Ukraine joined the non-proliferation treaty.

The 1968 pact, which is up for extension next spring, recognizes only five official nuclear powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and what was once the Soviet Union. Now four of the 15 former Soviet republics--Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus--are nuclear powers, although Kazakhstan and Belarus have already relinquished all claims to the weapons and agreed to dismantle them.

Even as Ukrainian lawmakers ratified the non-proliferation treaty, they attached six qualifications and explanations, stating that the pact “does not fully deal with the situation of a nuclear state--the Soviet Union--collapsing.”

They also stated that the mere presence of nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory does not violate the treaty--an apparent claim to the warheads until the day they are dismantled, leaving no room for Russia to try to regain them.

“We own nuclear weapons,” Kuchma told an unusually silent chamber. “But we don’t control them.”

At the moment, Russia has launch control over the missiles and could theoretically fire them without Ukrainian consent. However, Moscow has pledged to honor a veto from Kiev on their use.

An agreement signed by Russia, the United States and Ukraine in January committed Ukraine to rid itself of all its warheads within seven years.

However, Kuchma reminded the deputies that an unpublished side agreement between Ukraine and Russia last spring committed Ukraine to transfer the warheads to Russia within 2 1/2 years in exchange for fuel for nuclear power plants.

“Those caught up in the passions of false patriotism should remember that Ukraine can’t make nuclear weapons, and it can’t even use the warheads it inherited,” Kuchma said. “Just creating a system for safely maintaining the weapons it has would cost $10 billion to $30 billion.”

Kuchma once headed the giant factory that produced missiles, and he opposed the treaty until he was elected president in July. Lawmakers apparently were impressed by his conversion to the disarmament cause.

“When Kuchma talks nukes, lawmakers listen,” parliamentary adviser Petro Matiaszek said. In the end, with $4 billion in promised Western aid in the balance, Kuchma told lawmakers that further delay would be unacceptable.

“We have no choice,” the president said.

Ukraine’s access to world markets for its space launchers had been blocked because it had not joined the non-proliferation treaty. Now, the technology-minded Kuchma expects to sign a space cooperation agreement with the United States during his visit next week.

To sweeten the pie, Kuchma’s trip was bumped up from simply an official visit to a state visit, complete with a white-tie dinner rare for the Clinton Administration.

Ukrainian officials have delighted in telling reporters that only Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin has been so honored by the Clinton White House.

“This is a triumph for Ukrainian diplomacy and Ukrainian independence,” Foreign Minister Hennady Udovenko said.

Just hours before the vote, Ukrainian officials announced that they had achieved final agreement on security guarantees from the United States, Russia, Britain and France.

The leaders of the four nuclear powers and Ukraine are expected to sign a document to that effect at a meeting in Budapest, Hungary, in early December.

Nevertheless, the security guarantees compel the nuclear four only to consult one another if Ukraine is attacked; they do not oblige the Western nations to defend Ukraine militarily.

Times staff writer Efron reported from Moscow and special correspondent Mycio from Kiev.