Interfax-Ukraine
09:40 12.11.2016

Normandy format members may draw up blueprint of roadmap for Donbas by end of November

3 min read
Normandy format members may draw up blueprint of roadmap for Donbas by end of November

The countries involved in the Normandy format of negotiations on Donbas may draw up a blueprint of a roadmap for the implementation of the Minsk Agreements by the end of November, but it is unlikely that the parties can agree on a common draft within a short period of time, a Ukrainian diplomatic source told Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.

The parties are actively working on the document which the Ukrainian, German, French and Russian leaders agreed to draw up at the Berlin meeting in the Normandy format, the source said.

"The Normandy format's foreign ministers will meet at the end of November to discuss a working draft and voice their proposals," the source said.

The parties still have a lot of disagreements and differences which are likely to prevent them from reaching agreement on a common document, the source said. "Ukraine has clearly drawn five red lines, which were outlined earlier and on which Kyiv will be insisting at these negotiations," the source said.

Olha Aivazovska, Ukraine's representative in the political subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group for settling the conflict in Donbas, said on Friday that a roadmap for the implementation of the Minsk Agreements is unlikely to be agreed upon by the end of November, as Ukraine and Russia have considerable disagreements on a number of key issues, including the format and duties of an armed OSCE police mission.

"Each party has very different opinions on how a roadmap should look. It's hard to imagine how a document agreed upon between all parties can be drawn up. Even the security establishment phase is viewed by Ukraine as a lengthy and substantial one, with guarantees given to all parties and with the involvement of an OSCE mission, on which virtually no discussion has yet been started. There are radical differences here as well: Russia wants this limited mission to consist of several hundred people with small arms. And Ukraine is determined to establish law and order in a transition period, which would make it possible to safely transfer all power in the CDDLR [certain districts in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions] under Ukraine's de facto jurisdiction," Aivazovska said in an interview with Focus magazine.

According to Kyiv's estimates, an armed OSCE police mission to be deployed in Donbas should number at least 10,000 people, and the optimal number is 26,000, Aivazovska said. "They would have to visually control the 440-kilometer-long border section and maintain order before, during, and after local elections in the CDDLR," Aivazovska said.

Even if this mission numbers 10,000-15,000 people, its budget would reach hundreds of millions of euros, and therefore it makes no sense to talk about the chance of its formation this year, she said.

"The coordination of a roadmap is very much open to question. The work is being done, the parties are displaying unprecedented initiative, but there are no guarantees" that they can agree upon a common final version of the document, Aivazovska said.

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