MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/. OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Christine Muttonen said she admitted the possibility of her trip to Crimea to get personally acquainted with the situation on the peninsula, but only after consultations with Moscow and Kiev.
She said at the moment such a mission seemed to be quite challenging.
- Lavrov says 'Crimea is not a problem, it is a part of Russia'
- Ukraine begins exercises with missile tests close to border with Crimea
- Russian troops in Crimea on high alert following Kiev’s missile launch preparations
- Italy’s ex-prime minister says Trump should recognize Crimea’s referendum
- Putin says Crimea’s choice at 2014 referendum should be respected
"There have been thoughts about that but any visit to the Crimea would have to be done after consultations with the internationally recognized governing authorities which are in Kiev. We want to have consultations with Moscow about that also," Christine Muttonen told TASS in reply to the question whether she was ready to lead an OSCE PA delegation to get personally acquainted with the situation and communicate with local authorities and people.
"But at the moment it seems that such a mission would be very difficult to do. But of course we are thinking about that and we will have consultations," she said.
"We will try to find a compromise, we will try to have those consultations, but it would be helpful of course if there would be a movement in the Ukraine crisis in general," she said, noting that parliamentarians of the European security "had also resolutions or we talked about and urged both Ukraine and Moscow to implement the Minsk agreement".
"So we need the implementation of the Minsk agreement and we need some movement on that case," she noted.
In reply to the question when these consultations could possibly take place she said "it needs time". "So it's very hard to predict but of course the sooner the better," she summed up.
At a session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly held in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi in July, a resolution initiated by the Ukrainian delegation was passed, which dealt with alleged "violation of human rights and basic freedoms in Crimea," among them alleged violations of the rights of Crimean Tatar people. The Russian delegation qualified the document as "absolutely not objective, tendentious, and of clearly anti-Russian nature," refusing to discuss it.
At the end of November Muttonen visited Russia, meeting with top Russian parliamentarians.