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UKRAINE:PRESIDENT VIKTOR Yushchenko heard the magic words he was waiting for at the EU-Ukraine summit here yesterday: "association agreement", and a sentence in the joint declaration saying that the EU "recognised that Ukraine as a European country shares a common history and the common values with the countries of the European Union", writes Lara Marlowein Paris.

Three times in a brief press conference the Ukrainian leader noted hopefully that former eastern bloc countries who won association agreements in the 1990s have become members.