KIEV, July 30 (RIA Novosti) – The Kiev government is ready to send its representatives to the Ukraine contact group meeting in the Belarusian capital of Minsk on July 31, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman said Wednesday.
“The Ukrainian president instructed our contact group team to fly to Minsk tomorrow and to hold consultations so that all our demands were met,” Hroisman said.
The deputy prime minister said the delegation would demand unimpeded access to the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash site in eastern Ukraine.
“Tomorrow, through its delegations to the contact group, Ukraine will demand unimpeded access to the site, where the wreckage of the downed plane was found,” Hroisman said.
The delegation is also seeking to bring OSCE monitors to the crash area to confirm that Ukrainian troops observe the UN demand for a local ceasefire.
On Tuesday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko agreed to host talks on the Ukraine crisis in Minsk, the capital city of Belarus, following a request from his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow welcomes Belarus’ move but added that one meeting would not be enough to resolve the problems.
According to Poroshenko, the trilateral talks will involve Ukraine’s second President Leonid Kuchma, Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov and an OSCE official.
Earlier in the day, a group of independent experts from Australia and the Netherlands for the fourth time failed to reach the MH17 crash site due to heavy fighting between the militia and the Ukrainian Army.
On Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott expressed concern over the ongoing fighting around the crash site, saying “it’s not just the separatists, it’s the Ukrainian government as well.”
A total of 298 people, including 193 Dutch citizens and 27 Australians, died on July 17 as a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Donetsk Region of Ukraine. The cause of the catastrophe remains unclear.
