NEW YORK, Sept. 23 – President Viktor Yushchenko said Wednesday he had received assurances from Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO Secretary General, that Russia will not be able to block Ukraine’s accession to the alliance.

Yushchenko said that joining NATO is crucial for maintaining Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity, but Russia for years had been vehemently opposing the idea.

Security issues are high on Yushchenko’s agenda as he attends a U.N. General Assembly in New York with some analysts suggesting that relations between Ukraine and Russia may continue to deteriorate.

“When we talk about policy that the alliance is conducting with other non-member countries, including Russia, this policy will no way be causing blockage of normal relations between Ukraine and NATO,” Yushchenko said after meeting Rasmussen in New York.

“Ukraine will not be small change for NATO in relations with other countries,” Yushchenko said.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a letter last month accused the Ukrainian president of running the “anti-Russian” policy by citing Ukraine’s push to join NATO. He also suspended the arrival of Russian ambassador to Ukraine.

The letter marked significant escalation of tensions between the two countries with some analysts predicting that Russia may use military force to try to instigate instability and perhaps to try to split Ukraine.

Russia sent tanks, troops and warplanes into Georgia, a former Soviet Republic seeking membership of NATO, in August 2008, and recognized the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as sovereign countries in the face of Western condemnation. Russia has deployed thousands of troops in the regions.

Volodymyr Horbulin, a former Ukrainian national security advisor, in a recent analysis said that Russia has been seeking a major destabilization in the region, including perhaps deployment of military force, to try to reverse Ukraine’s pro-Western course.

Horbulin urged Ukrainian leaders to call an international conference to provide additional security guarantees to Ukraine.

Yushchenko has been seeking to convey his security concerns to U.S. President Barack Obama.

Specifically, Yushchenko has been seeking to warn Obama that Russia’s attack against Georgia in 2008 poses a threat to the region that European leaders still haven’t addressed.

Volodymyr Khandohiy, the acting foreign minister, said Yushchenko planned to hold a brief meeting with Obama later on Wednesday. “A bigger meeting is on agenda and we work with a U.S. party to make sure it takes place in the future,” he said.

After the meeting with Rasmussen, Yushchenko stressed that joining the alliance for Ukraine is a matter of survival as an independent state.

“I am deeply convinced that the integration into NATO, integration into the European collective security policy is an essence behind which stands our territorial security and independence,” Yushchenko said. (nr/ez)