OSCE endows status of participants to Russian citizens invited from ORDLO for negotiations in TCG - Harmash
Representative of Donetsk in the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) on the settlement of the situation in Donbas Serhiy Harmash said that the OSCE moderator violated the trilateral format of negotiations, endowing the status of participants to representatives from certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions invited for negotiations in the TCG.
"An important point: both in the bilateral consultations with the moderator, and in the unofficial meeting of delegations representatives, the so-called 'representatives of the ORDLO' with Russian passports took part. That is, the OSCE arbitrarily, in violation of the Minsk agreements, violated the trilateral format of negotiations, giving the status of delegations/negotiating parties to Russian citizens from the ORDLO, invited, by the way, still unclear by whom...," Harmash said on his Facebook page following the talks of the political subgroup in the TCG on Tuesday, March 30.
Nevertheless, according to him, "the negotiation process in the TCG subgroup on political issues continues."
"The negotiation process has not been disrupted. Although, today, I already have a clear certainty that all the efforts of the Russian side are directed not at a peaceful settlement of the conflict, but at creating conditions when we lose our temper and withdraw from the negotiations first. Never we will not give Russia an opportunity to accuse us of disrupting the process to which the sanctions against the Russian Federation are tied," the representative of Donetsk said.
As Harmash said, "for the first time a unique meeting of the working group on political issues of the TCG took place."
"The first five hours of negotiations were in form of bilateral consultations of the OSCE moderator with representatives of the parties in a bilateral format. Then, for about half an hour, there was an 'informal information meeting' of the official representatives of the delegations. And only the last half an hour an official meeting of the working group took place," he reported.