Cheney angers Russia by urging Ukraine's leaders to unite on Nato

UKRAINE:US VICE-PRESIDENT Dick Cheney angered Russia yesterday by urging Ukraine's feuding leaders to unite in their bid to take the country into Nato and ward off the "threat of tyranny, economic blackmail and military invasion".

The clear reference to the perceived danger posed by Russia to its neighbours in the aftermath of the Georgia conflict provoked a furious response from Moscow and its main ally in Ukraine, opposition leader Viktor Yanukovich.

"The United States has a deep and abiding interest in your well-being and security," Mr Cheney said after meeting President Viktor Yushchenko and prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who are locked in the latest round of a power struggle that has blighted Ukraine since they overturned Mr Yanukovich's fraudulent election victory in the 2004 Orange Revolution.

"We believe in the right of men and women to live without threat of tyranny, economic blackmail and military invasion or intimidation," Mr Cheney said, amid fears Moscow could try to destabilise Ukraine's largely ethnic-Russian Crimea region. "Ukraine's best hope to overcome these threats is to be united - united domestically first and foremost, and united with other democracies."

There was little sign of a rapprochement between Mr Yushchenko and Ms Tymoshenko, however. He accuses her of trying to oust him with the help of Mr Yanukovich's party, which has strong links with Moscow and is dominant in mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine and the Crimea peninsula, where the Kremlin's powerful Black Sea fleet is based.

Ukraine is deeply divided over whether to join Nato, and Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has threatened to train missiles on the country if it becomes a member of the alliance.

After Mr Cheney endorsed Kiev's membership bid, Mr Yanukovich declared that "any attempts to force Ukraine into Nato are doomed to failure. This question has to be solved by the Ukrainian nation through a referendum."

In Moscow, where Mr Putin has accused unnamed US politicians of provoking the Georgian conflict to help Republican John McCain win the forthcoming presidential election, other senior officials blamed Mr Cheney for the crisis.

"It's Cheney who was behind all the recent events on former Soviet turf," Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's lower house of parliament, said. He claimed the vice-president was trying to forge an "anti-Russian axis" on his visit to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine.