Ex-Heavyweight Champ Klitschko Eyes Political Ring

By BENNY AVNI, Staff Reporter of the Sun
April 15, 2008

UNITED NATIONS — A former World Boxing Council heavyweight champion, Vitali Klitschko, said he believes that in two years his homeland, Ukraine, will be a member of NATO and a European country "not just geographically," and that Kiev, where he aims to be elected mayor next month, has the potential to become a financial center in the style of Berlin, New York, and other cites he had called home during his career as a pugilist.

Mr. Klitschko, who once used the boxing ring to promote Ukraine's Orange Revolution, says "Soviet propaganda" haunts many of his countrymen. Speaking to reporters yesterday in Manhattan, where he announced plans to battle corruption and to tighten the rules that govern business in Kiev as part of his campaign leading up to the May 25 election, Mr. Klitschko, the son of a general in the Soviet army's air force, reverted to his childhood to explain some Ukrainians' reluctance to join NATO.

He said that in front of his childhood home there was a large billboard depicting an "American soldier full with blood, with weapons," adding that the advertisement's caption read: "Our enemy, soldier of NATO." Even now, he said, everyone in Ukraine has "exactly the same billboard inside the brain."

Mr. Klitschko said he had an opportunity to speak with President Bush of his ambition for better Ukrainian ties with the West during the president's visit to Kiev just prior to the recent NATO summit in Bucharest. Opposition from Russia, as well as from inside Ukraine, has slowed the country's drive to join NATO, he said. Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, yesterday cited opinion polls saying the "vast majority" of Ukrainians oppose joining NATO. Mr. Churkin added sarcastically that as far as he knows, such decisions are not made by Kiev's mayor.

Mr. Klitschko is not mayor yet. He cited opinion polls saying he has a razor-thin lead over the current mayor, Leonid Chernovetsky, who defeated him two years ago after he withdrew from a mandatory bout to defend his WBC title. In boxing, Mr. Klitschko said, "I was the best in the world," but "right now I fight for the people who live in my city."

Nevertheless, he said he dreams of making boxing history by becoming, along with his younger brother, Wladimir, the only siblings ever to wear a championship belt at the same time. Mr. Klitschko, now 37, told The New York Sun he may yet fight the current WBC title holder, Samuel Peter of Nigeria, but added that such a decision could be contemplated "only after the election."