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Kerry refuse to comment on leaked phone conversation btw Ashton, Estonian minister

ROME, March 06, /ITAR-TASS/. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and foreign ministers of a number of European Union states during their meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov refused to comment on leaked telephone conversation between the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, a source in the Russian delegation said on Thursday.

“At a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and a number of foreign ministers from the European Union member states in Paris, the Russian minister asked them to comment on the leaked telephone conversation between the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and the Estonian Foreign Minister,” the source said. “Colleagues responded they did not comment on any leaked information.”

A recording of a conversation between the EU foreign policy chief and the Estonian foreign minister that surfaced in the Internet on Wednesday showed that the snipers, who were supposed to have killed a big number of people in Kiev during the peak of oppositionist rampages in the second half of October, had been brought in by someone from the opposition.

The recording can be found in YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEgJ0oo3OA8.

Closer to the end of the conversation, in the course of which Paet described his impressions from a trip to Kiev as ‘sad’ ones, he referred to a certain ‘Olga’, a civic society activist who appeared to have a ramified network of contacts and to control a big enough number of levers of influence. He quoted her as saying “evidence shows that people […] on both sides - the policemen and people from the streets - were killed by the same snipers.”

“She showed me some photos and she said she had spoken to a doctor, who said there was the same handwriting and the same type of bullets,” Paet said. “It’s really disturbing that now there is a new coalition and they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.”

“There’s a stronger and stronger understanding that it was not /Ukrainian President Viktor/ Yanukovich who stood behind the snipers - it was somebody from the new coalition,” Paet said.

Baroness Ashton said to this she thought the EU would do the investigation.

Paet answered that the reluctance to investigate the situation around the snipers “was already discrediting the new coalition”.

They stated the absence of any considerable trust in the coalition members among the people on the Maidan - Kiev’s notorious Independence Square, with Paet adding that the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Acting Interim President Pyotr Poroshenko seemed be the only person in the new government who did enjoy a fair enough degree of trust.

Baroness Ashton recalled, among other things, she had hinted to the people on the Maidan that they had to let the Verkhovna Rada, the national parliament, and governmental institutions function properly.

“I said to people in the Maidan, yes want real reforms but you need to go through the short term first,” she indicated recalling her address to the crowds of ‘peaceful protesters’. “I also said to them, if you simply barricade the buildings now and the government doesn’t function we can’t get money in because we need a parliament to be a partner with.”

The European Union declined to comment. Ashton’s spokesperson Maja Kocijancic said: “We don’t comment on leaked phone conversations.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry said this was surprising. “We have noted online recordings. The EU’s refusal to comment is surprising. In fact, just recently EU officials actively commented on U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland’s phone talk,” the ministry said.

Its comment posted on Facebook earlier said: “It turns out that the European Union knows that the opposition was behind the snipers at Maidan.