KIEV, Ukraine, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Ukraine's Defense Ministry has denied its chief had held talks with the U.S. government about ballistic missile defense.
"Some media sources published statements earlier made by Sergei Markov, the director of Moscow's Political Research Institute, saying Ukraine's defense minister had approached the United States to discuss possible missile cooperation," the Russian RIA Novosti news agency reported from Kiev Tuesday.
However, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry in a statement denied those claims, RIA Novosti said. "The statement does not correspond to reality," the ministry said. "There were no statements on behalf of Defense Minister Anatoly Hrytsenko on initiatives for cooperation between Ukraine and the United States in the sphere of missile technologies and anti-missile defense systems."
Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, addressing a news conference in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, denied that the Bush administration had ever suggested to the Ukrainian government that it should host any BMD system in the country.
"I haven't heard of such an issue. As far as I know, it doesn't exist," Yanukovych said according to the RIA Novosti report.
Yanukovych's denial came two weeks after the U.S. government made an official proposal to base a radar system for BMD application in the Czech Republic. Washington also said last week it intends to open negotiations with Poland about basing BMD assets there.
"Moscow has strongly opposed the deployment of an anti-missile shield in its former backyard in Central Europe, describing the plans as a threat to Russia's national security," RIA Novosti said.
