Petyur R. The Middle Eastern Region in Ukraine's Foreign Policy.

The thesis explores the process of formulation and realization of Ukraine's foreign policy towards the countries of the Middle East. The study defines the major components of Ukraine's policy towards the Middle East.A special attention is paid to the policy's security aspect, which is seen as a two-fold phenomenon since Ukraine plays a role of a security contributor in the region and is influenced by the emergence of new threats originating in the Middle East.Ukraine's position towards the Arab-Israeli conflict,it is argued, has been mostly pro-Arab,excluding a short period of a balanced mediation in 2001.As for the reasons of joining the anti-terrorist coalition in Iraq (2003-2005),the author states that the Ukrainian authorities and the were more prone to contradict the international and national law,as well as Ukraine's previous peace-making experience,than to let the Ukraine-US relations worsen in 2002-2003. The author states that although Ukraine enjoys friendly relations with all the regional countries,it is subject to such threats as possible terrorist attacks due to her affiliation with the US-led coalition in Iraq,and rise of Islamic fundamentalism on its own territory.Extensive exploration of trade relations with the Middle East shows that the region is becoming increasingly important in terms of implementing Ukraine's export strategy,although the region is a market mainly for her low value-added exports.Arms trade and technical cooperation between Ukraine and the Middle East proves promising but this sphere needs a thorough correlation with Ukraine's aspirations towards the membership in the EU.The author also discovers a number of factors of the development of military-technical cooperation of Ukraine with the Middle East and investigates their influence on this track of cooperation.In the energy cooperation section it is argued that implementation of the energy diversification projects needs an elaborated policy which has been missing throughout the period of independence.The author states that the most promising could be the project Ceyhan-Samsun to supply oil to Ukraine, given that the necessary political,economic and technical conditions of the project are achieved.