Poland hopes to mediate Ukraine election crisis

Wedged between troubled Ukraine and the West, Poland has plunged into the disputed Ukrainian presidential election in an attempt to mediate – a sign of anxiety over the prospect of instability and rising Russian influence so close to home.

President Aleksander Kwasniewski said yesterday that he would head to Kiev at the request of Ukraine’s President, Leonid Kuchma, to help broker talks between the government and the opposition led by Viktor Yushchenko, who says he was robbed of victory by a Moscow-favoured candidate in Sunday’s runoff vote.

“I have been asked by Kuchma as well as the opposition to come to Ukraine for discussions and as a mediator. I am ready and willing to do so,” he said. “I am going as the Polish president, but I hope with the backing of the European Union.”

Kwasniewski was to leave today for Kiev, the Polish news agency PAP reported.

A new EU member, Poland’s heart is clearly with Yushchenko, the Western-leaning opposition leader who has declared himself the winner over Viktor Yanukovich, openly supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

With their memories of domination by Moscow during the Cold War, Poles have an emotional stake in Ukraine’s fate because they fear a strengthened Russia closer to their borders, analysts say.

They see their own struggle to shake off Moscow-backed rule reflected in the struggle waged by Yushchenko’s camp.

Kwasniewski’s announcement came as another famous Pole, former president and Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, visited Kiev and urged on a massive crowd of opposition supporters to fight for “freedom, democracy and economic freedom”.

Walesa urged Europe and the rest of the world to get involved. “Ukraine should be helped, because it is a huge nation, very strongly dependent on communism,” Walesa said at a news conference at Yushchenko headquarters. “It is not able to shed this dependence on its own, without economic proposals.”

“Now, due to this conflict, maybe we will all turn our attention to Ukraine and begin to co-operate.”

Both Kwasniewski, 50, and Walesa, 61, are deeply versed in the clash between government and opposition – a conflict they helped resolve in Poland in the late 1980s.

Both played key roles in so-called “round table” talks that ended communist rule, Walesa as head of the anti-communist Solidarity trade union movement and Kwasniewski as a young, reform-minded minister in the communist government of the time.