On September 4, 2008, in Bern, regular political consultations were held between the foreign policy offices of Ukraine and the Swiss Confederation.

The Ukrainian delegation was headed by the First Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr. Volodymyr Khandogiy, and from the Swiss party a delegation headed by the Deputy State Secretary of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs Ambassador Pierre Helg took part in the consultations.

The participants of the meeting minutely discussed the Ukrainian – Swiss relations and paid special attention to the bilateral cooperation intensification in political area first of all the top level dialogue and a search of specific ways of realization of the existent cooperation potential in commercial-economic, scientific-technical and humanitarian areas.

The parties also noted that an important part of the bilateral dialogue is interparliamentary cooperation which currently has a significant potential for intensification.

The delegations exchanged views on the ways of interaction strengthening between Kyiv and Bern on the way of European integration and cooperation in the framework of international organizations. Among urgent issues of regional cooperation, the parties in particular discussed the armed conflict situation in Georgia.

During the negotiations, Mr. V.Khandogiy showed interest of the Ukrainian party in further visa procedure liberalization between the two countries (right up to complete cancellation in the outlook).

In the course of the meeting, the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine stated the historical justification of the Holodomor in Ukraine of 1932 – 1933 as a consequence of maleficent policy of the totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union and showed hope that the Swiss Confederation would join to the countries which recognized the Holodomor of 1932 – 1933 as a genocide act against the Ukrainian people and support other international initiatives of our state on this issue.