More religious freedom in Ukraine?

A government body that oversaw church-state relations in Ukraine will be shut down.

The State Committee on Religious Affairs, a vestige of the old Soviet bureaucratic system, will be closed as part of administrative reform instituted by Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko. The new Ukrainian leader, who is described as a practicing Orthodox Christian, believes the agency has become obsolete, and some experts agree its liquidation would increase religious freedom in Ukraine.

Speaking Tuesday in the Ukrainian city of Zhitomir, Yuschenko said the government should not intervene in religious matters and repeated a promise he made in his inauguration speech last month that everyone in Ukraine “should be able to pray in his prayer house.”