Donetsk, Nov 1 - DAN. The Donetsk People’s Republic envoy to Minsk talks, DPR acting Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova thanked Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko for his decision to raise the Donbass conflict issue at the Munich Security Conference Core Group meeting in Minsk.
“We welcome the fact that the Belarussian president addressed the Donbass topic at a key international security conference,” Nikonorova told reporters on Thursday. “We are also grateful to Belarus for its current assistance to the peace process and quite effective handling of all organisational and technical issues of Contact Group meetings.”
Any proposals and projects concerning the settlement of the conflict should be coordinated between the parties to the armed standoff in the first place, i.e. between the Donbass Republics and Kiev, she added.
However, the implementation of this mechanism is practically blocked by the Ukrainian leadership. “A priority is to put pressure on the Ukrainian authorities to make them honour their commitments under the Minsk Agreements,” the diplomat said.
The MSC Core Group met in Minsk on October 31. Speaking at the meeting, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said that Minsk was ready to provide assistance in holding local elections in Donbass prescribed by the Package of Measures.
Lukashenko also said that the proposed negotiating formats - the “Normandy Four” and the Contact Group - had been unable to cope with the task of stopping the conflict.*jk