Sweden is playing one of the leading roles in assisting Ukraine's Eurointegration process, President Viktor Yushchenko claimed following Ukraine-Sweden talks within a state visit to Ukraine of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.
V. Yushchenko appreciated the European Eastern Partnership Initiative, declared by the foreign ministers of Sweden and Poland, and expressed hopes that this initiative will be shortly filled with a particular content.
The President predicted that elaboration of the association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union will be completed within the next 6-8 months. "It would be a great honor for us to sign this agreement during the Swedish EU Presidency," the Head of State said /Sweden will hold the EU Presidency from July 1, 2009 -ed./.
V. Yushchenko noted the annual growth of a bilateral Ukraine-Sweden goods turnover, and Ukraine and Sweden may reach USD 1 billion in 2008 owing to this. President Yushchenko also added that the volume of Swedish investments to Ukraine has increased 10fold over the past two years and now totals over USD 1,300 billion. "And this is an excellent statistics," he underscored.
As referred to a "landmark", according to the President, theme of the 300th anniversary of the military-political alliance between Ukraine and Sweden, V. Yushchenko expressed himself for the continuation of joint historical studies, studying in Sweden's institutions of archival materials related to the period of hetmanship of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, Ivan Vyhovskyi, Ivan Mazepa, Pylyp Orlyk. "This is a considerable part of our history which even today exerts a great influence on the establishment of our independence, recognition of our truthful history of that time," he said.
We have a great history people may be taught with how to solve very intricate questions, but the most important is that we have common values "of freedom and democracy establishment, and we see this as a basic component of harmony of our relations both at the state and human levels," Yushchenko summarized.
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