WASHINGTON - A team of US doctors secretly traveled to Vienna in December to treat Ukraine`s Viktor Yushchenko for dioxin poisoning, at his family`s request, The Washington Post said Friday, quoting US officials and doctors involved in the effort.
Doctor Gregory Saathoff, team leader for the US medical mission, said the US government was not directly involved in the effort, to avoid accusations of interference in Ukraine`s presidential election, but an unnamed top US official said the US State Department had provided logistical support for the team.
Saathoff provided only broad details of the team`s role in treating Yushchenko, but Michael Zimpfer, director of the Vienna clinic where the treatment took place, said the US team had provided expertise on a "difficult, vexing case" and also a "qualified second opinion" on the treatment to follow.
Ukraine`s foreign minister, on an official visit to Washington, said he had not seen the report and did not confirm or deny any part of it.
"I am going to meet at the State (Department), and I will ask them to clarify," Boris Tarasyuk said at the National Press Club, in response to a question.
As the doctor who briefed reporters on Yushchenko`s health during his stay at the Rudolfinerhaus clinic, Zimpfer "was the greatest cover, because he was so willing to take the credit for everything," the senior US official said.
The pro-Western Yushchenko, who will pay his first official visit to Washington next month, won a monumental struggle over three rounds of presidential elections last year against his pro-Russian rival, Viktor Yanukovich, in what became known as the peaceful "orange revolution."
During the campaign, Yushchenko`s photogenic, youthful face was ravaged by pustules typical of dioxin poisoning.
As president, he has vowed to bring the former Soviet republic into the European Union and the NATO alliance, and has received open support from Washington.
The request for US medical assistance for Yushchenko`s then-suspected poisoning with dioxin came from his family late last year, via an official in the Pentagon, the official said, adding that Saathoff kept in touch with the State Department throughout the trip.
In October, a Ukrainian lawmaker brought samples of Yushchenko`s hair, nails and blood to Washington for analysis, and they were given to Robert McConnell, who runs the US Ukraine Foundation and recruited Saathoff and his team.
"They didn`t want it to be known it was being done in the United States, because a major part of the campaign against (Yushchenko) was anti-Americanism," McConnell said.
Saathoff said he put together a team of about six US physicians of various specialties, naming only the toxicologist -- Christopher Holstege, also of the University of Virginia -- who on October 31 placed dioxin at the top of the list of possible substances responsible for Yushchenko`s condition.
"It`s not every day that you`re asked to evaluate someone of this stature. It`s probably the poisoning of the century," Holstege said.
The diagnosis was confirmed a few weeks later by a laboratory in the Netherlands, and the US team of doctors left Vienna on December 12.
Another US official who also asked not to be named said the substance found in Yushchenko`s body was similar to a type of dioxin produced by a Russian lab earlier in the decade, but quickly added that it did not mean the Russians were involved in the poisoning, since the material could have been stolen.
"We are not embarrassed by the truth, but at bottom no one is able to say who did it. We just don`t know," the official told The Washington Post.
03/11/2005 15:48 GMT