According to Ukrainian ex-president
Leonid Kuchma, the Contact Group will discuss a memorandum envisaging steps for
stopping hostilities in eastern Ukraine
MINSK, September 19. /ITAR-TASS/. A meeting of the
Contact Group on the Ukrainian crisis settlement has started in Belarusian
capital Minsk.
Like last time on September 5, the talks involve former
Ukrainian president and the current president's special envoy Leonid Kuchma,
Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Alexander
Zakharchenko, head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) Igor
Plotnitsky.
First deputy DPR premier Andrey Purgin, LPR Supreme
Council chairman Alexey Karyakin, Russia’ s ambassador to Kiev Mikhail Zurabov
and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Ambassador Heidi
Tagliavini are also taking part.
According to Kuchma, the Trilateral Contact Group
comprising Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE will consider a memorandum whose first
point is how to stop hostilities in Ukraine’s embattled southeast.
He expressed hope for progress and added that the issue
of the OSCE’s role in strengthening the security regime on the
Russian-Ukrainian border was also on the agenda. Besides, Kuchma said, the OSCE
should take under its control “the situation with the zone that will have a
local self-government”.
Karyakin confirmed to ITAR-TASS earlier today that the
meeting’s key goal will be to negotiate issues of strengthening the ceasefire
regime.
“Our goal is to end the war,” he said. “The principled
agreement on truce was reached at the previous meeting in Minsk on September 5,
and it has been observed on the whole. But it’s not a secret that there are
cases of violation of the regime although we are entirely committed to it.”
A special role should be played by the OSCE, Karyakin
said.
In turn, Zurabov told journalists that “a significant
step forward” is expected at the meeting that would make previously reached
agreements “more stable”.
According to UN data, clashes between troops loyal to
Kiev and local militias in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions during Kiev’s
military operation to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call
themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics, have resulted in about
3,000 deaths and massive destruction and forced hundreds of thousands to flee
Ukraine’s war-torn southeast.
The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on a
ceasefire and exchange of captives during the OSCE-mediated talks in Minsk on
September 5 that came two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed
his seven-point plan to settle the situation in the east of Ukraine. The long
hoped-for ceasefire took effect the same day, but reports have said it has been
violated several times.
Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, on September
16 passed the law granting a special self-rule status to certain districts in
the Donetsk and Luhansk regions for three years. Elections to local
self-government bodies were set for December 7. The special status law was
stipulated by the Minsk agreements.
The Rada also passed a law on amnesty for participants
of combat activities in Ukraine’s troubled eastern regions except for those
people who committed serious crimes.
Source:
ITAR-TASS 19-09-2014
