German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday said “no miracles” were achieved on the Ukraine crisis, but talks with the country’s leader and his Russian and French counterparts did lead to some progress on ending a deadlock in the peace process.
After a five-hour summit billed as “difficult,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said all sides had agreed to draw up a roadmap for applying the frayed Minsk peace accords following months of impasse.
“Between now and the end of November we have to approve a roadmap. It will be a document on the implementation of all the Minsk accords,” he said at a news conference after the Berlin gathering, according to Russian news agencies.
Merkel said at a separate press conference that the talks “didn’t achieve miracles,” but that progress was made “with the creation of a so-called roadmap.”
“There’s much work left to do,” she said, flanked by French President Francois Hollande.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on his first visit to Berlin since the conflict erupted, stressed that the Minsk accords remained the best path toward a lasting resolution to war in eastern Ukraine.
The roadmap agreed to in Berlin will be now be further thrashed out and discussed by the countries’ foreign ministers, the leaders said.
“You have to respect the successive steps of the Minsk accords,” Hollande told reporters.
Putin had not visited Berlin since Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, sending relations with the West plunging to their lowest point since the Cold War.
Russia backs a separatist, pro-Moscow insurgency in eastern Ukraine that has claimed nearly 10,000 lives on both sides.
It denies accusations that it has sent troops and weapons across its border with Ukraine.
The Minsk accords, signed in February last year with French and German mediation, call for a ceasefire along with a range of political, economic and social measures to end the conflict between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels.
While the accords reduced the intensity of fighting, they have failed to stop it.
On a key sticking point — the issue of holding possible local elections in rebel-run regions, Poroshenko said no polls could take place without “the unconditional withdrawal of foreign armed forces.”
Putin for his part wants partial autonomy for rebel-held parts of eastern Ukraine like Donbass and Lugansk, while Kiev wants reassurances that fair and free elections would be held there.
None of the four leaders meeting in Berlin had expected a breakthrough, but Germany and France had argued that it was important to return to the negotiating table more than a year after the Minsk agreements were signed.
Putin, speaking separately to reporters after the talks, confirmed that the four were in favor of widening the role of the European OSCE observer mission.
Poroshenko said that meant an agreement had been reached on deploying an armed OSCE mission to the east.
Putin, who wants to assure the supply of provisions to rebel regions, said the talks had focused heavily on security matters, but on humanitarian issues “we unfortunately didn’t make much progress.”
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
RSS