There exist different proposals on the issue of giving weapons to employees of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Donbas and any decision on the matter needs to be approved by all 57 participating states, the organization's secretary general, Lamberto Zannier, told reporters.

"The issue is that there are various ideas on the table: the Ukrainian president is proposing an armed police operation to help create a safe environment for elections to take place in Donbas. We heard President Putin stating that he would not be against giving weapons to monitors on the contact line, which is a different concept. So we need to have, first of all, a clear proposal, or a clear idea of what will be proposed [officially], and then that needs to be assessed. Of course, there is the precondition that there needs to be a permissive environment on the ground, everybody has to be open to that. And then of course there needs to be a decision by consensus, so it has to be approved by all 57 participating States of the organization. So this is not something that is imminent in any case. There is a discussion and we will have to see what this discussion produces," Zannier said.