Real talk takes place behind closed doors

Davos is often seen as purely a talking shop. But events and discussions with real substance take place too, though usually in private.

One such significant meeting was yesterday’s bilateral meeting between Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State and Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-Western president of Ukraine.

After Ukraine wrote to NATO, the US-led Western defence apact, this month asking to be put on the road to membership, Mr Rice told the president in their private Davos talk that Washington would support the bid to join the military alliance.

A senior US official said Ms Rice believed that the NATO door should be kept open for Ukraine.

That is a stance with potentially far-reaching consequences given highly tense relations between Ukraine and neighbouring Russia, which views with intense suspicion NATO's military expansion towards Russia's borders.

In a sabre-rattling gesture, Russia said this week that the former Soviet republic NATO membership bid would have serious implications for relations between the two states.  Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said today that there was no security justification for enlargement of NATO, and that the expansion plan was a throwback to the Cold War.

Ukraine has also relied on Washington for support in its entry bid into the WTO. That accession bid to bring the country deeper into the Western fold is expected to be endorsed next month unless there are any last minute technical objections to it.

Gary Duncan, Davos