KIEV Ukraine AP Ukraine's leftist-dominated parliament on Tuesday failed to ratify a deal with the World Bank on providing risk guarantees for foreign creditors. The vote came the same day a delegation from the World bank arrived in Ukraine to review projects in the former Soviet republic and discuss new loans for the next 18 months the bank's Kiev office said. Lawmakers in the 450-seat parliament voted 167-74 to reject the five-year agreement which the government and the World Bank signed last February the Interfax news agency reported. The deal would have allowed the Cabinet to provide guarantees to foreign creditors or investors to protect them from possible losses or other risks linked with political and economic instability. The agreement mostly concerned Ukraine's agricultural sector and the guarantees were to be backed by a special World Bank fund with the annual quota for Ukraine set at dlrs 120 million. Red tape corruption and the slow pace of reforms have made many investors wary of Ukraine despite its large size and 51 million-strong population. Parliament's finance committee chairman Valeriy Alioshyn said the failure to ratify the document stemmed from lawmakers' ``general negative attitude to any deals that have to do with foreign loans'' according to Interfax. Alioshyn added that many deputies also erroneously linked the World Bank agreement to the government's earlier practice of guaranteeing foreign loans for individual Ukrainian companies many of which subsequently failed to repay them. While in Ukraine Paul Siegelbaum World Bank director for Ukraine and Belarus is to meet with President Leonid Kuchma Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko and other top government officials. The World Bank suspended cooperation with Ukraine in March following the International Monetary Fund's decision to freeze aid to Ukraine because of stalled economic reforms. The IMF finally approved a dlrs 2.2 billion loan in September after the government took steps toward reform and the World Bank resumed its cooperation as well granting dlrs 950 million in loans for several projects. Ukraine had already received more than dlrs 1.5 billion from the World Bank since it became a member in 1992. vl/sms/adc APW19981201.1087.txt.body.html APW19981201.0958.txt.body.html