PRIORITY FOREIGN COUNTRY

UKRAINE

The U.S. Government withdrew benefits from Ukraine under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) in August 2001, and imposed $75 million worth of sanctions on Ukrainian imports on January 23, 2002, based on the repeated failure of Ukraine to comply with the June 2000 Joint Action Plan. Ukraine unfortunately enacted an unsatisfactory optical disk (OD) law in February 2002. The U.S. Government has worked with industry to develop an approach to improve the actual enforcement of copyright protection even with this inadequate OD law. To that end, the United States, in cooperation with Ukraine and industry officials, has developed a set of ten regulations to be implemented to improve the inadequate OD law. We hope to see Ukraine implement the substance of these regulations soon and follow up with strict enforcement of the current OD law. At the same time, the United States remains committed to working with Ukraine to address the remaining deficiencies in the existing OD law and thereby work toward reestablishing normal trade relations.