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OSCE Secretary General: Political initiative on Donbass armed police mission not on agenda

Еhe OSCE Secretary General notes the dynamic of the conflict is not a very good one

HAMBURG, December 6. /TASS/. There is no political initiative on forming an armed police mission in Donbass, OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier said in an interview with TASS ahead of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Hamburg scheduled for December 8. According to him, the mission could be either armed or unarmed.

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Zannier said that "we’ve been doing some internal work on that including looking on the models in the UN, for instance, but first of all, there is no political initiative on the table, even the debate outside seems to have diminished so there isn’t real a push for us to move in the direction of assisting in the organization of elections or providing a security framework." "I would like to see progress on that but unfortunately I don’t see much of it at this moment. I am not at all sure that giving police weapons would result in better protection, it might create problems for them," he added.

"So once we start discussing a police component, we can separate these two things, we don’t have to consider that necessarily this component should be armed," Zannier noted.

When speaking on the situation in Donbass, the OSCE Secretary General said that "the dynamic of the conflict is not a very good one, the sides have to deliver and we are there to facilitate but as I said we cannot take over this responsibility of the sides on ourselves."

He went on to say that "unfortunately there has been the latest phase in Ukraine when weapons that were withdrawn appeared to be reintroduced, including multiple rocket launchers, they are used… they do provoke damage and they do affect the civilian population so we see an increase in the civilian victims."

According to the OSCE Secretary General, there are two areas of disengagement where there has been progress, but the sides are not moving out of the third area which is Stanitsa Luganskaya. "But even in the areas where they disengaged, there is a number of tasks that are not being performed. We want to see demining, we need to have the space cleared for us to be able to be present inside but this is not happening so we keep remaining outside. The disengagement has taken place but it’s not completed," Lamberto Zannier concluded.

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