MOSCOW, August 19. /ITAR-TASS/. The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly contact group on Ukraine may meet for its first meeting in late September or early October, the head of the Russian parliamentary committee Alexei Pushkov told ITAR-TASS on Tuesday.

This inter-parliamentary association was set up in late June at a session of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, on the initiative by Russian parliament lower house State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin. The contact group is expected to include 10-12 representatives of OSCE member states. Members of the contact group mainly seek to work out recommendations for a peaceful solution to Ukrainian crisis and bringing unbiased information to the OSCE about current events in the country’s southeast.

“I believe that the issue of the OSCE contact group meeting on Ukraine will become clear in early September after a planned visit by OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Ilkka Kanerva in Moscow,” Alexei Pushkov said in reply to the question about possible dates of the meeting. “But work is already under way on the issue. The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly chief and the global organization’s Secretariat are holding consultations with several countries over possible dates, when a contact group will convene and regarding a possible preliminary working meeting which will set the agenda for the work of the contact group and its current main goals,” he added.

Pushkov noted that this issue was being debated “at the level of the assembly’s leadership and several delegations from the countries which will join the contact group.” “My forecast is that this event has all chances to take place in late September or the first half of October,” the deputy added.