Prague - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said Tuesday that Ukraine would oppose replacing Kiev's efforts to join the European Union with EU's Eastern Partnership plan to bring closer six ex-Soviet states, including Ukraine.

"We do not want this partnership to be an alternative, a substitute for our entrance to the European Union," he said through an interpreter after meeting his Czech counterpart Vaclav Klaus.

On Friday, EU leaders approved the plan aimed at drawing closer six former Soviet states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. They also agreed to boost EU's aid for them by another 600 million euros (811 million dollars).

But the plan, which does not offer full membership to the six countries, has a potential to slow down efforts by the states like Ukraine to enter the 27-member bloc.

The programme, to be launched on May 7, was proposed by Sweden and Poland as an Eastern counterweight to France-backed initiative to reinforce EU's ties in the Mediterranean.

The policy gained further ground after Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008.

In an apparent jibe at France, whose President Nicolas Sarkozy has groomed the so-called Mediterranean Union and has given the Czech EU presidency a hard time, Klaus said that it would be wrong "if the European Union dominantly and exclusively focussed on the southern partnership." (dpa)