WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. is supportive of a new IMF lending programme for Ukraine and the European Union initiative to extend a loan to Kyiv based on Russian central bank assets immobilized in the West, European Economic Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said on Friday.
Dombrovskis, who is in charge of the 27-nation EU's economic policy, met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday to discuss support for Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings in Washington, Dombrovskis said the U.S. had for now no clear position at this stage on whether to join the EU Reparations Loan project.
"There is now constructive engagement from the U.S. side as regards questions related to Ukraine support," Dombrovskis said.
"The U.S. is broadly supportive and welcoming our initiative as regards reparation loan," he said.
"At this stage, there is no clear positioning on the U.S. side on potential action which they would take concerning the immobilized Russian assets on U.S. territory," Dombrovskis said, noting there were only about $5 billion immobilized Russian assets in the U.S., compared to around 210 billion euros ($244.90 billion) frozen in Europe.
U.S. support is also crucial for the IMF to extend a new loan to Ukraine, because the IMF normally does not lend to countries at war and if it were to do so, it would need sufficient country assurances that the loan would be repaid.
"On the IMF program, this we discussed both bilaterally, but also it was raised at the G7, and the U.S. was, generally speaking, supportive of the IMF program," Dombrovskis said.
($1 = 0.8575 euros)
(Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Paul Simao)
