Tymoshenko will accept any offer from Cox-Kwasniewski mission in name of signing Ukraine-EU Association Agreement
Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is serving a seven-year prison sentence, is again saying she does not set any conditions to the mission of European Parliament observers composed by Pat Cox and Aleksander Kwasniewski regarding her future and will accept any offer made by them in the name of signing the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius in late November.
"I reiterate: I have never set and will never set the Cox-Kwasniewski mission any conditions or demands regarding my future. I will accept any offer made by them, no matter how hard it is for me, in the name of signing the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius on November 28-29, 2013," Tymoshenko said in her address to the participants and guests of the 24th Ukrainian Canadian Congress held in Toronto on November 8-10, posted on the Web site of the Batkivschyna party on Saturday.
Tymoshenko reiterated that she realizes her responsibility in the context of the upcoming signing of the agreement.
"I want everyone who has not heard me to hear me: the future of Ukraine is much more important than any ambitions and politics. History will never forgive a disruption of the signing of the Association Agreement to those who should have done everything possible and even impossible to make it happen," Tymoshenko said.
Tymoshenko said that in three weeks Ukraine would be able to get "a ticket to the future, about which generations of Ukrainians dreamed and for which they fought, or we will wait for it another 300 years."
"The acuteness of the fight that currently surrounds the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union indicates that this issue is pivotal for Ukrainians and that decisions need to be highly responsible," she said.
On October 11, 2011, a Kyiv court sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years for abuse of authority when negotiating gas deals with Russia in 2009. Tymoshenko has been serving her term at a correctional facility in Kharkiv since late December 2011. She was transferred from the detention facility to Central Clinical Hospital No. 5 in Kharkiv on May 9, 2012.
The Ukrainian authorities are now considering sending Tymoshenko abroad for treatment or amnestying her. The Ukrainian parliament has not been able to reach a compromise on this issue.
A solution to the "Tymoshenko issue" is a condition for the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius in late November 2013.