WASHINGTON - Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko is to meet US President George W. Bush at the White House Monday before heading to Chicago for a hero's welcome from that city's sizeable Ukrainian community.
The US trip is the first since the Ukrainian politician led mass protests that ousted the pro-Russia regime in the key ex-Soviet nation -- the 'orange revolution' that Bush often cites in touting his support for the spread of liberty and democracy around the world.
Topping the agenda during the five-day visit will be Ukraine's bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) by the end of the year. Washington is insisting that Kiev provides additional guarantees for protection of intellectual property before it gives its backing.
Yushchenko will also lobby for Washington to grant Ukraine a market economy status and to repeal the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a Soviet-era law barring Washington from delivering favorable US trade tariffs to the USSR.
Bush and Yushchenko will discuss the matter of the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Iraq, something Yushchenko has vowed would be completed by October.
Yushchenko's predecessor Leonid Kuchma is widely believed to have sent Ukrainian soldiers to Iraq in a bid to mend fences with Washington after Kiev's alleged sale of radar equipment to Saddam Hussein -- one of many scandals that soured the bilateral relationship.
Washington hopes the visit will mark "not only the return to the friendly relations from seven or ten years ago, but also a breakthrough towards a whole new level," US Ambassador in Kiev John Herbst was quoted as saying in Kiev last week.
Yushchenko, who is traveling with his American-born wife, is scheduled Wednesday to address a joint session of Congress, becoming the only leader of a former Soviet republic, excluding Russia, and the first leader of Ukraine to do so.
It is an honor reserved for only the closest of US friends.
"President Yushchenko's election is inspiring the spread of democracy throughout the world, in spite of threats and intimidation. We welcome him to this cathedral of democracy and look forward to hearing from him," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert said in a joint statement last week.
A packed agenda on Monday, the first full day of the visit, includes a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a speech before the US Chamber of Commerce as well as the White House visit.
Later Monday, Yushchenko heads for the midwestern city of Chicago for a lavish banquet staged by a local Ukrainian group.
Tickets to the event sold out weeks ago, and thousands of people had to be turned away, said Orest Baranyk, president of the Illinois division of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America.
"Ukraine, after centuries of occupation, finally broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991, but in reality it wasn't free. The people that controlled it were the oligarchs from the old regime. It was only with Yushchenko that the Ukraine really declared its freedom," he said.
There are around 150,000 people of Ukrainian descent in Chicago, about half of whom immigrated in the past 10 to 15 years.
Many there feel a personal connection to Yushchenkno because his wife, Kateryna Chumachenko, was born and raised in Chicago.
Washington strongly supported the pro-Western Yushchenko during the mass protests that he led last November after a fraud-plagued presidential election was initially won by the pro-Russia candidate.
The nation's supreme court eventually annulled the disputed ballot and Yushchenko won a new poll.
04/04/2005 11:16 GMT