Donetsk, Dec 7 – DAN. The Contact Group on peaceful settlement of the Donbass crisis has closed its today's meeting in Minsk, DPR delegation to Minsk talks press secretary said.
"The meeting of the Contact Group has finished, the next is scheduled for December 21," Viktoria Talakina said.
At today's talks the participants discussed POW swap, implementation of the agreement on disengagement of forces and hardware, the October 27 Makeevka shelling and the investigation results; this night's shelling of DPR territory which cut off power to Donetsk water treatment plant and interrupted water supply to some of Donbass townships.
Talakina also said that DPR delegation head Denis Pushilin urged the talks participants to adopt the Protocol for the meetings and to confirm the Contact Group's will to implement the Steinmeier's formula.
"The importance of these positions has been emphasized before. The Steinmeier's formula was approved of and recommended to be implemented by the Normandy Four, including its Ukrainian participants. Still it has not yet been discussed by the political subgroup because of the Kiev side. Negotiators and coordinators has been working on the Protocol for quite a long time. A lot of options have been considered including propositions and comments of the sides."
Talakina reminded that the Protocol is to 'bind parties to record agreements achieved and would not let them step back'.
The subgroups for political and for humanitarian issues has also finished today's meetings, the security group did not plan a meeting today and the talks of the economic working group were disrupted by the Ukrainian side for 7th time in a row.