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UN, Ukraine holding talks on prolonging rights observer mission in Ukraine beyond Dec 15

The Deputy Official Spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, Farhan Haq said told Itar-Tass Monday

© EPA/ANDREW GOMBERT, File

UNITED NATIONS, September 09, /ITAR-TASS/. UN Secretariat and Ukrainian government are holding talks on prolonging the term of the human rights observance mission in Ukraine beyond December 15, 2014, the Deputy Official Spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, Farhan Haq said told Itar-Tass Monday.

He said that as far as he knew the previous prolongation of the mission’s stay in Ukraine was done last month and talks on its stay in the much-troubled country were in progress.

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Latest east Ukraine violence claims 'at least 3,000 dead'

No changes in the mission’s composition were planned, Haq said. At the moment, it had 34 staff members who were placed to five cities - Kiev, Donetsk, Lvov, Odessa, and Kharkov.

The mission arrived in Ukraine March 15 and it has been drafting monthly reports for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The latest report, which the mission submitted August 29, invited much criticism on the part of Russia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in connection with its publication that the authors of the document continued espousing a rather selective approach to the tragedy in eastern Ukraine as they extolled the achievements of the Kiev authorities on the ‘liberated territories’.

Moscow also pointed to the glaring distortion of facts related to the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border.

UN officials retorted to these remarks by saying the observers were reporting the facts they saw and their reports were not expected to satisfy one or another party necessarily.

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