Clinton Lauds Ukraine Leader, Vows to Boost Aid : Diplomacy: $900-million package would put Kiev in 4th place on U.S. assistance list. Money earmarked for helping dismantle nuclear arsenal.

Praising President Leonid D. Kuchma as a post-Soviet Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Clinton on Tuesday promised to add $200 million to the U.S. aid program for Ukraine to help pay for the dismantling of the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal and to prop up the nation’s sagging economy.

If approved by the incoming Republican-dominated Congress, the additional money will increase total U.S. aid to Ukraine to about $900 million over two years, placing the France-sized country fourth on the list of aid recipients, behind Israel, Egypt and Russia.

“We think it is so important to complete the work of denuclearization, (and) we think your long-term economic development, your commitment to democracy and to an open economy is so important that we want to be there over the long run,” Clinton told Kuchma during a joint news conference.

While Clinton and Kuchma were meeting in the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin won assurances on Capitol Hill that the new Congress will spare Israel’s $3-billion annual aid allocation from its budget-cutting fervor.

The coincident appearances of Kuchma and Rabin seemed to suggest that it will be extremely difficult for congressional Republicans, no matter how determined to slash foreign aid in the abstract, to put the ax to particular recipients.

There can be no doubt that Ukraine needs the money. With a population of 52 million, Ukraine is the second-most-populous nation carved out of the Soviet Union. It is also one of the most economically depressed. Recent efforts to introduce private enterprise into the economy so far have only added to the distress of the population.

About $350 million of the two-year aid package for Ukraine is intended to reimburse the Kiev government for the cost of dismantling the potent arsenal of nuclear weapons that it inherited from the defunct Soviet Union. Most of the rest is designed to keep the economic reforms from collapsing.

After hesitating for more than two years, the Ukrainian Parliament agreed last week to renounce its right to possess nuclear arms.

In exchange for Ukraine’s ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States, Britain and Russia assured Kiev of their assistance should the nation be threatened by a nuclear power.

“Since his election just five months ago, President Kuchma has bravely and squarely confronted the two greatest challenges facing Ukraine--economic reform and the nuclear question,” Clinton said. “He has taken hard, practical steps required to secure a more peaceful and prosperous future for his people.”

Earlier, during a welcoming ceremony, Clinton told Kuchma that he “reminds us of one of our greatest leaders, Franklin Roosevelt, who provided leadership in a time of great hardship in the United States. Like him, you inherited a nation in the throes of economic depression, and like him, you have lighted the darkness and created hope.”

Kuchma said that, despite its current economic distress, Ukraine is not basically a poor country.

“We are a young country, and an inexperienced one,” he said. “That is why we are ready to learn in the sphere of economics, politics, humanism on the best examples of other countries.”

Clinton and Kuchma signed agreements calling for future cooperation between the two countries and authorizing joint peacetime space programs. Lower-ranking officials signed other agreements to encourage private investment in Ukraine.

Rabin, who met Clinton on Monday, spent Tuesday on Capitol Hill meeting with key lawmakers from both parties. Summing up his meetings, he said he is “confident the United States will continue to assist Israel at the same level” as it has in the past.

News Conference Text

* A transcript of President Clinton’s news conference with Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma is available on the TimesLink on-line service.

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