OSCE Chairman-in-Office,
Austrian Foreign Affairs Minister Sebastian Kurz is convinced that the OSCE
Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) will continue to perform its functions under
the current mandate, will expand areas of its control over the entire territory
of Donbas and will primarily control the ceasefire observance.
At a briefing in Mariupol on
Wednesday morning, he also said one needs to be realistic about the mission's
powers. Answering a question of Ukrainian journalists about the possibility of
the OSCE police mission deployment in Ukraine, he stressed the OSCE has 57
member states and all the decisions are taken by consensus.
He stressed the OSCE will do
everything so that the mission should operate as efficiently as possible, hold
surveillance over the entire territory of Donbas so that the mission's effort
should help achieve a complete ceasefire.
However, the efforts of the
OSCE mission alone are not enough, the chairman of the organization said. The
efforts of decision makers in Moscow, Kyiv and other countries are needed, Kurz
said.
The minister also noted the
importance of restoring the destroyed infrastructure in Donbas, but stressed
the priority of ensuring the ceasefire on both sides.
He said the dialogue and
negotiations need to be continued. At present, the Minsk agreements are the
only foundation, a document based on which they must act, Kurz said. He said
that even though he is not satisfied with the progress of the implementation of
these agreements, the situation at the time of their signing was worse than it
is now, and it could be even worse.
Answering a question about the
prospects of the Minsk agreements implementation, the OSCE chairman-in-office
said he is not satisfied with the current 'status quo', but in the absence of
another base document, they will carry out the Minsk accords.
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