Moscow, January 15, Interfax - The Ukrainian president's initiative to set up a commission for the unification of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the breakway Kievan Patriarchate is casting doubts on the secular nature of the Ukrainian state, the Moscow Patriarchate said.

"Viktor Yushchenko's insistence on forming a 'unified local church' with active assistance from the state arouses surprise," Archpriest Nikolay Balashov, a spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations, told Interfax.

Father Nikolay made this statement in remarks about Yushchenko's initiative, voiced on Friday to the Synod of the Kievan Patriarchate, unrecognized in the Orthodox world.

"The leader of a secular state - as Ukraine is defined in the constitution - has formulated his program regarding the future of Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Moreover, he is making proposals on how many bishops and priests a joint theologian commission, to be charged with the task of forming a new church, must have," Father Nikolay said.

Meanwhile, "representatives of the Kievan Patriarchate are not bishops or priests in the real sense of the word, since they have no legal ordination, while their head Mikhail Denisenko [former Metropolitan Filaret] has nothing to do with the Church at all, as he was recently excommunicated. These circumstances are being utterly disregarded," he said.

"This position is shared by all of the world's local Orthodox Churches and has been confirmed by its high representatives on many occasions, last in July 2005," Father Nikolay said.