You're reading: Paris calls on Donbas conflicting parties to ensure secure access for OSCE SMM

France is calling on the conflicting parties in eastern Ukraine to ensure free and secure access for the monitors of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) and to implement the Minsk Agreements.

“It [France] strongly condemns any kind of obstructing the OSCE from performing its mission. Those responsible for such impediments must be identified and held accountable. I call all the conflicting parties and particularly the separatists, to ensure a free, unimpeded and secure access for the OSCE mission across the area of its responsibility and to practice implementing the Minsk Agreements, the only way towards solving the conflict,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said in a statement published by the press service of the French embassy to Ukraine on April 24.

France and Germany, as parties to the Normandy Format, will make sustained efforts to solve the conflict by way of full implementation of the Minsk Agreements, Ayrault added.

On behalf of the French nation, he offered condolences to the family of the OSCE SMM employee killed in the OSCE car blast in Donbas, as well as to the entire OSCE and all its employees. Ayrault also expressed wishes for the quick recovery of those injured in the incident.