BRATISLAVA, March 27. /TASS/. Slovakia, that currently holds the OSCE chairmanship, is monitoring the situation with the Ukrainian presidential election on March 31 to see to it that the election be held within the bounds of the law, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs Lukas Parizek said in an interview with TASS.
"As the country holding the OSCE chairmanship, we are taking care to ensure that the election proceeds in line with law, without any problems, and this is our main goal. We must see to it that everything goes the way it must go from the point of view of the process, so that we could say - the voting was democratic, held in accordance with the law," he said.
Parizek found it difficult to say why the Steinmeier formula on enacting legislation on a special self-government rule in some areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk region is not being put into practice in Ukraine. The state secretary stressed, however, that Slovakia urges abidance by the Minsk accords.
"We will keep concentrating on the life of the people in conflict areas. And it is difficult to say why some initiatives materialize, while others - don’t," he added.
Former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s formula to settle the Donbass conflict, which he put forward in late 2015, envisages implementing Ukrainian legislation on a special local self-government rule in some areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions on a temporary basis during local election in Donbass, and on a permanent basis after the publication of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s report on its results.