Borys Tarasyuk

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Borys Tarasyuk, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

Borys Tarasyuk (1 January 1949) is the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. He is from Zhytomyr Oblast. Tarasyuk studied international relations and international law at National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, and graduated in 1975. The minister is fluent in English, French and Russian.

Tarasyuk served as foreign minister for the first time from April 1998 until 2000. He later broke with President Leonid Kuchma, and became a foreign relations advisor to Viktor Yushchenko, the main opposition candidate in the 2004 presidential elections. After Ukraine's Orange Revolution, Tarasyuk became foreign minister again on February 4, 2005. Tarayuk favors Ukrainian integration with the European Union.

[edit] Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation

Borys Tarasyuk is the founder of the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation (IEAC), a political action committee established to campaign for NATO- and European Union memberships in Ukraine. The group is funded by Western donations and is open about its goals. The IEAC' logo juxtaposes the flag of Ukraine with the logos of NATO and the European Union. However, polls cited by Tarasyuk show that only between 18% and 22% of Ukraine's population support NATO-membership.[1]

The Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation has influenced Ukraine state policy in the past. For example, a report produced by the Institute titled Trilateral Plan for Solving the Transnistrian Issue [2] recommended changes to the customs regime relating to Transnistria. Less than five weeks after the report's publication, the recommendations were implement and signed into law. Ukraine-Transnistria border customs conflict followed on March 3, 2006. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the European Union, and the United States backed the legislation, while Russia opposed it.