MOSCOW – The OSCE Austrian chairmanship will call for broadening the OSCE mission to Ukraine and for improving its technical equipment, Austrian Foreign Minister and OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Sebastian Kurz said.
“The OSCE should assist in the ceasefire and, primarily, in the withdrawal of heavy weapons. A better humanitarian situation in that region is a very important task. I have an impression that the OSCE monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine can be reinforced,” he said.
“The presence of OSCE monitors has improved the situation rather than deteriorated it. So, a broader presence of the OSCE mission will become an objective, and better technical and HR support of the mission will be an important issue to enable 24/7 monitoring,” he said.
Russia and Austria have confirmed in negotiations in Moscow that the OSCE remains the main platform for settling the Ukraine crisis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
“We, just like Austria, stand for the maximal use of the OSCE for settling the Ukraine crisis; we have underlined the absence of an alternative to the implementation of the Minsk agreements in the full scope and in due sequence,” Lavrov said.
