President Victor Yushchenko and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy held talks in Paris on Friday, according to the President`s press-office. The two leaders spoke about how to enhance Ukraine’s political dialogue with France and develop economic and energy ties.
Yushchenko reaffirmed his country`s ambition to join the European Union, thanking France for its support, and said it was important to implement an agenda proposed during last month`s Ukraine-EU summit in Kyiv. (France will hold the EU’s rotating presidency in the second half of 2008).
Yushchenko and Sarkozy also discussed Ukraine`s September 30 snap parliamentary election and its results.
The Ukrainian leader gave his French colleague declassified files on where the French prisoners of war that died in Ukraine between 1944 and 1954 are buried, urging Sarkozy to support his initiative to sign a Common memory declaration. Ukraine also expects France to recognize its Soviet-era famine as genocide, he added.
Yushchenko invited Sarkozy to visit Ukraine.
