DUSHANBE, July 30. /ITAR-TASS/. US Secretary of State John Kerry agreed that the consensus reached in Geneva on April 17 was the best basis for resolving the crisis in Ukraine but “forgot” even to mention it at the new conference with his visiting Ukrainian counterpart Pavel Klimkin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

“Yesterday (July 29) I talked with John Kerry by phone. We always have rather constructive conversations and tell each other the truth. Yesterday I paid special attention to the need for the Ukrainian army to immediately cease fire in the (Malaysian plane) crash area and stop violating the UN Security Council resolution. Kerry promised to send a corresponding signal. We shall see how responsive Kiev will be to this signal,” Lavrov said.

“Second, we paid special attention to the Geneva Statement of April 17, which we had spent eight hours to draft and which our Western partners had refused to support in the UN Security Council and the OSCE,” Lavrov said. “He (Kerry) agreed with me that this statement was the best basis for further work. It calls for immediately stopping the use of force and starting a constitutional process that must be open, inclusive and accountable and must draw all Ukrainian regions into the constitutional reform. This was not done and no steps have been taken in this direction so far.”

Lavrov said that Kerry had agreed with the need to return to “the firm basis of the consensus reached on April 17”. “We agreed that the meeting to be held in Minsk must be directed towards working out agreements on the implementation of the Geneva Statement and the roadmap proposed by the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Swiss President (Didier Burkhalter) as a follow-up to the Statement,” he said.

“This once again raises the question of ability to come to agreement because literally an hour after my conversation with Kerry, he (Kerry) spoke at a news conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin and said that Ukraine was finally ready to cease fire and begin a dialogue and that all components for the dialogue with the militias were in (Ukrainian President Petro) Poroshenko’s peace plan,” Lavrov said.

“Kerry did not mention the Geneva Statement publicly and referred to Poroshenko’s peace plan, which says that the militias must surrender their arms and hope for amnesty or they will be destroyed. You will probably see the difference,” the Russian minister said.