( Itar-Tass ) - Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Timoshenko is going to discuss energy security and the political situation in Ukraine with US Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Her aides said that she is visiting the US "at the invitation of the American side", without elaborating.
"I am going to discuss with Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Rice two main questions. The first is energy security that concerns not only Ukraine, but also Europe, as well as other countries of the post-Soviet space. The second question is to explain to them how the opposition understands the development of the situation in Ukraine and what ways out of the political collapse in which the republic is we have outlined," Timoshenko told.
Apart from the meetings with Cheney and Rice, she plans conversations with the US president's assistant for national security affairs Stephen Hadley, and with Congressmen and businessmen.
Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Wednesday, Timoshenko touched on several aspects of Russian-Ukrainian relations.
In particular, she blasted Ukraine's gas deals with Russia that envisage the participation of intermediary structures like RosUkrEnergo.
Timoshenko also spoke against any deals in which Ukraine's gas transportation system would be turned over to Russia in exchange for access of Ukrainian companies to the development of Russia's gas fields.
She was also critical of a prospect of Ukraine's joining the Common Economic Space (CES) of CIS countries.
"I do not believe that today, when we have gone such difficult way to independence we can engage in a remake of the Soviet Union in any form. I want to say that the CES is not only a free trade zone, but also the establishment of a suprastate body to which a significant part of Ukraine' s sovereignty would be passed, first of all in matters of the financial and customs policy," Timoshenko said.