Ambassador Taylor visited Ukraine this November and has given a speech at the Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko' University. Ambassador of US admitted that it was great to be here in Ukraine in the morning of the first snow in Kyiv this year. He considers this is an auspicious start, and he is very pleased to continue in the tradition of U.S. ambassadors coming to speak to Kyiv International University.

Taylor said: "The first part of the discussion is what I have to go through in order to get to the second part of this morning, which is what I enjoy greatly. So I will make some remarks this morning talking about the Ukrainian politics, strong Ukrainian democracy, something about American democracy, but then I would very much appreciate the opportunity to hear your reflection and to obtain your questions about anything that I've said, or anything else that's on your mind. So, thank you for having me.

I understand that the rector is the only rector of this University, and I am happy that I have a chance to speak to the students of a private university that is here in the capital of Ukraine that is moving in the direction that you want to see it go.

I was here about a year and a half ago. And when I got here a year and a half ago in June 2006, you'll recall, I got here after your elections that took place in March 2006, and you were still in the process of putting together a government, you were creating a coalition. When I arrived, I said to some people, maybe some of the people of the press who are here, that I was glad to be here. I was going to be here for 3 years, I was going to have a 3-year visit, and I said in June of 2006 that I was happy to be here in Ukraine during the time that there would be no more elections. It turned out of course that I was wrong, that you and your leaders decided the elections will take place. Democracies have elections, so elections are a good thing for a democratic nation. I was very pleased to have been here to see that election, even though it surprised me a bit. I didn't think that I was going to be able to see one of then. And those elections, now a month ago on the 30-th of September, were free and fair and good elections. And now, of course, you are in the business, your elected officials are in the business, again, of creating together a coalition, and you are again listening to the different kinds of coalitions that could be formed.

I have told before and will continue to say that the United States Government doesn't have a preference on what kind of coalition your elected representatives put together, whether it is an Orange coalition, or a Blue coalition, or some other broad coalition. Since there was a free and honest election, the United States Government, I think most governments around the world are very pleased to work with whatever government emerges from those free and fair elections.

What we do think is it's a good idea to form that kind of government. We consider that there are decisions to be made, and actions to be taken, governing to be done that are necessary right now in Ukraine, and I'll come back to this a little later on. But in fact these elections I think were good elections of a young democracy.

The rector and I were discussing about how Ukraine is a young democracy, for only 16 years. But let me say some words to you about a young democracy. I'm going to talk to you in short about a country that is within two decades of its independence. I'm going to talk to you about a country that is coming off of a world famous revolution - a revolution that the whole world watched and applauded. I'm going to talk to you about a country that is picking its way, is kind of feeling its way between two major world powers. I'm going to talk to you about a country that has recently elected its 3-rd President. And in that election for the third president of this young democracy was a controversy, was an unusual election that didn't follow exactly the script of normal elections according to the constitution of that country. One candidate of this election for the third president, this young democracy I'm talking about, was inclined towards one of those two world powers. This is US and we had great amount of barriers and mistakes on the way to democracy but we reached this level. Ukraine now also is on the same way struggling through the large number of borders.

There are other things that the new government is going to have to do, after WTO and after the free trade agreement with the EU. Everybody knows that the new government is going to have to attack corruption. The United States has been helping, other countries have been helping, previous governments have been working, the new government will also have to work very hard to identify and attack corruptive features in all parts of the society - in the government, in education, in a private sector. This is an important task of this next government; it will be an important task, again, for moving into Europe.

The courts, I mentioned the courts before when we were talking about the problems of April and May and June of this year, the courts coming under influence, accused of corruption, and accused of being bribed. The court system in Ukraine has a lot of reform it's going to have to go through. This is going to important for the people to support, and it's going to be important for the government to take strong action.

It is very important to obtain investors, in particular international investors here, because another thing that's coming up very soon that this new government is going to have to address is 2012, the European Cup. This big sporting event in 2012 is going to take an enormous amount of work, an enormous amount of money, an enormous amount of effort to build the roads and the stadiums and the airports and the hotels, and the state budget in Ukraine, I think, is not going to be able to cover all of those expenditures. That money is going to have to come from investors. Investors are going to have to come invest in stadiums, invest in hotels, invest in roads, and the only way investors are going to come bring their money to help get ready for 2012 is if the investment climate works, and it goes back to what I was talking about in corruption, regulation, courts. So those are very important pieces, I think, of what this next government is going to have to do. All of the main political parties during this last election campaign said that they were going to improve the political climate and the economic climate and the investment climate here in Ukraine so that investors, both Ukrainian investors as well as international investors, would feel comfortable in bringing their money and their investments, their interest and their talent to Ukraine. So there's no difference between Party of Regions and BYuT and Our Ukraine on the need to improve the investment climate. Now the hard part of actually making those changes and reducing regulations, cleaning up corruption as I've mentioned, having a court system that can adjudicate disputes between investors. These are all important things that all three major parties seem to agree that they are going to move forward on. I think that this is an important feat.

A young democracy has barriers and challenges, and one of the challenges in this country is there are many people in Ukraine who grew up under a totally different system, who grew up under a system that is very different from the one you're looking at today. My own view is Ukraine made the right decision, is making the right decisions to move to Europe, to establish a real democracy - it's a young democracy, but it's clearly a real democracy. The United States Government is very please to be a partner with Ukraine as it moves in this direction, but your generation, your class and the classes before you and after you here at this university, you have a major responsibility for your country and for your country men and women. So that's why, again, as I started out talking about young democracy, I'm talking about a new generation that can move forward, that didn't grow up in the old system, that didn't work in the old system, remembering what the old system is like because you know what your parents and grandparents have said, but you have the opportunity to move forward in a fresh way, in a vibrant way to establish a new democracy in a way you want to. The United States of America is very pleased to support you in this.