RIGA (Sputnik) – The final declaration of the Eastern Partnership summit in Riga was adopted Friday after hours of debates about its text, Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna announced.
“Yes, all participants have signed, including Azerbaijan,” he said.
Earlier, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus refused to sign the document.
Conflicting reports over the stance of the three former Soviet republics centered around the use of the word "annexation" in the declaration to describe last year's reunification of Crimea with Russia.
Over 60 years after its transfer to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Black Sea peninsula rejoined Russia following a referendum in March 2014 in which almost 96 percent of voters backed the move.
According to Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, the Eastern Partnership declaration states "countries from the European Union claim the illegal annexation of Crimea."
"That's their right that they don't acknowledge the Crimean events," Makei told reporters in the Latvian capital of Riga.
The final declaration calls for full implementation of the Minsk accords on settling the Ukrainian conflict, confirms a commitment by all signatories to Ukraine's territorial integrity, and expresses full support for the OSCE Monitoring Mission in the country and reconciliation efforts by the Contact Group.
Its text contains no mention of instituting a visa-free regime for Ukraine and Georgia in 2016. The declaration, however, hails progress made by the two states toward easing visa requirements, saying that the issue will be raised again when Georgia and Ukraine complete the second set of EU visa-free travel requirements.
The EU-Eastern Partnership, seeking closer ties between the European Union and their counterparts from Belarus, Armenia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova, was established in 2009.
