KIEV, December 19. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada has put off consideration of a bill on reintegration of Donbass because of a discouraging international reaction to it, Yuri Boiko, the leader of the Opposition Block party faction in parliament told reporters on Tuesday.
"The agenda for Tuesday’s session doesn’t contain Bill No. 7163 on reintegration of Donbass," he said. "That’s a good sign and it means the international community sent an appropriate signal to the Rada so as to prevent it from indulging in politicking and to push it towards the decisions that would help restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity and attain peace."
Boiko believes the bill developed earlier is little more than "a political declaration that will only make it harder for the mediatory mission of US and Russian representatives to do their work."
"This is very harmful for the peacekeeping process," he said, adding that the bill ran counter to the Minsk accords, which the whole world had endorsed as groundwork for political settlement of the conflict.
Rada speaker Andrei Parubiy and President Poroshenko’s representative in the Rada, Irina Lutsenko gave the assurances earlier the Rada would consider the bill during the current week session, which is the last one this year.
Deputies introduced more than 700 amendments to the text. Their initial plans showed they would begin considering the document on Tuesday so that it could undergo the voting on Thursday.
Lutsenko said later on, however, the amendments made after the first reading distorted the strategy that President Poroshenko had embedded in the document. That is why more consultations were needed to make the bill eligible for the second reading.