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Ban Ki-moon expects Minsk consultations on Ukraine to yield progress in solving conflict

He said the previous Minsk documents, namely the memorandum and the protocol, were a very good beginning of the settlement process

UNITED NATIONS, December 23. /TASS/. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expects the forthcoming round of Minsk consultations on Ukraine to yield progress in conflict settlement on the basis on previous agreements, Ban’s Spokesperson Stйphane Dujarric said on Tuesday, answering a question from TASS.

He said the previous Minsk documents, namely the memorandum and the protocol, were a very good beginning of the settlement process. He called on the parties to develop these results.

When asked whether the United Nations Secretary General was expecting any documents to be reached at a meeting scheduled for December 24, Dujarric said he thought the Secretary General was expecting settlement of the conflict.

The Contact Group on Ukraine is scheduled to meet in Minsk on December 24 and 26. The dates were announced after a telephone conversation between Ukraine’s President Pyotr Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 22.

The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on a ceasefire at OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) mediated talks on September 5 in Belarusian capital Minsk. Two weeks later, the Contact Group on Ukraine comprising representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE adopted a memorandum outlining the parameters for the implementation of commitments on the ceasefire in Ukraine laid down in the Minsk Protocol of September 5.

The document contains nine points, including in particular a ban on the use of all armaments and withdrawal of weapons with the calibres of over 100 millimetres to a distance of 15 kilometres from the contact line from each side. The OSCE was tasked with controlling the implementation of memorandum provisions. The document was signed by OSCE envoy Heidi Tagliavini, Ukraine’s former president Leonid Kuchma, Russia’s Ambassador to Kiev Mikhail Zurabov, DPR Prime Minister Aleksandr Zakharchenko and the head of Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), Igor Plotnitsky.

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