TT: Right after your arrival in Taiwan, you met with the vice chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, Lin Chong-pin (
Kravchuk: It was not discussed. I was briefed by the vice chairman of the council on the state of the relationship between China and Taiwan. It was very interesting for me. What I understood was that after your presidential election last year, the relationship between two Chinese nations could be more open and there may be a new stage for relations.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
I personally stressed the necessity to start dialogue between China and Taiwan. From my point of view, the dialogue must start on very simple matters, not complex ones.
Only after you start the dialogue can you discuss future steps on how to solve the problem. That's what we really talked about. Nobody mentioned any kind of middleman negotiator in our discussion.
So maybe there was a slight misunderstanding about what had been discussed.
What I really stated was that the relationship between China and Taiwan must be based on the highest principles of democracy and liberty. And I'll do my best -- that's what I said -- to persuade the political elite in China and Taiwan if they want to listen to me.
TT: You were involved in the founding of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that led to the effective end of the Soviet Union through a fairly peaceful transition.
Kravchuk: As you know, an empire can't last forever. All empires in the world have disintegrated. And the biggest one to disintegrate was the Soviet Union.
Actually there were objective causes for the Soviet Union to collapse. The domestic forces fighting for democracy and independence won. And the Ukraine, one of the biggest nations in the former Soviet Union, was actually the leading force in that. And history decided that I was the man for the task. In 1990, I became head of the parliament, and I actually led the independent movement in the Ukraine.
Actually it was me, [Boris] Yeltsin as well as [Stanislav] Shushkevich who signed the document [the so-called "Belovezhski Agreement"] that legalized the end of the Soviet empire. We acted in accordance with the active Constitutions and in accordance with international law.
Our agreement was ratified by the parliaments of all related nations. The document we signed now is in the archives of the UN as an international treaty. I want to conclude by saying that freedom and democracy is the most important thing in the history of mankind. It's impossible for one nation to dominate others.
There are only two possibilities for any kind of unification or integration of nations to take place: if the people want it, or if both nations that would like to integrate are based on democracy. You can't integrate two nations if one is based on democracy and the other on totalitarian rule.
TT: What do you think Taiwan and China could learn from your experience of the peaceful establishment of the CIS?
Kravchuk: I have various experiences. I would suggest that those who would like to use my experience must sit around the table and listen to all of my stories starting from the 1970s.
TT: The Chernobyl nuclear disaster that took place in April 1986 has been regarded as the world's worst nuclear power accident. While Taiwan has seen heated debates over the construction of a new nuclear power plant, what do you think Taiwan can learn from the Ukrainian experience in handling the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster?
Kravchuk: You are not the only nation in the world that debates this problem. For example, Germany also experienced the same domestic fight. And as you know, last December we closed a nuclear power station because we received requests and demands both internally and from other European nations. From the financial point of view, we definitely lost a lot. My conclusion is that if nuclear reactors are not safe, we can't allow the building of new nuclear reactors. They have to be 100 percent safe.
Two million children in the Ukraine were affected by the Chernobyl disaster. We lost hundreds of thousands of hectares of the richest land in the world. We have problems with water purity. We have problems with [contaminated] land and air. These are environmental problems we faced. For many years to come, we will be unable to predict the consequences for our health and the health of our neighboring countries. But we can say for sure that the number of cancer patients has increased drastically.
Only one nation in the world understands the Ukraine, which is Japan [following the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear weapons]. Nuclear power is a relatively cheap source of power.
But [developing nuclear power] has unpredictable consequences. Certainly, scientists have come up with a new generation reactors, but what we need is an absolute guarantee that they will be totally safe.
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