VIENNA, September (RIA Novosti) - Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz called for reasonable peace negotiations on the Ukrainian crisis in a statement published on the Austrian Foreign Ministry’s website Thursday.
“Ukrainian citizens have the right to humanitarian aid, permanent ceasefire and for those responsible to hold just and reasonable peace negotiations. . . . We consider the direct talks between the two presidents Poroshenko and Putin in recent days to be a positive sign,” Kurz is quoted as saying.
The minister noted that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko presented a plan for peace back in June and Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently put forward his seven-point plan for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Kurz has high hopes for the upcoming meeting of the Contact Group on Ukrainian reconciliation, he said. The group, consisting of Ukrainian and Russian officials, representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and eastern Ukraine’s independence supporters, is set to meet in Minsk on September 5.
The Contact Group’s first meeting took place in the Belarussian capital on September 1. Representatives from the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics then said that if the self-proclaimed republics received certain legislative guarantees of their special status, they would make every effort to “save the single economic, cultural and political space of Ukraine and the whole space of the Russian-Ukrainian civilization."
Southeastern regions of Ukraine have been under fire since mid-April, when Kiev launched a military operation against independence supporters, who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new Kiev government that came to power after a February coup.
The conflict has claimed more than 2,500 lives, according to a UN report published last week.
