German foreign minister delays his departure from Minsk for scheduled tour of South America

BERLIN, February 12. /TASS/. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is taking part in the talks of the leaders of the Normandy Four (Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine) in Minsk, has delayed his departure for the tour of South America scheduled for today. Steinmeier was to depart for Brazil, Peru and Colombia. "Talks [in Minsk] are proceeding with difficulty and are still ongoing," the German Foreign Ministry said in a statement. So the German top diplomat is still in the Belarusian capital, a ministry spokesman said. Normandy Four, Contact Group talks The talks of the Normandy Four on Ukrainian settlement have been underway for over six hours. The meeting has been held behind closed doors. Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko did not make any statements for nearly 500 journalists prior to the start of the meeting. Journalists hope the presidents and the chancellor will make statements after the meeting. Simultaneously with the Normandy Four summit, Minsk is hosting a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukrainian settlement. It involves Kiev’s representative - ex-Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) plenipotentiary representative Denis Pushilin, self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) representative Vladislav Deinego, OSCE Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini and Russia’s ambassador in Kiev Mikhail Zurabov, who is a mediator at the group’s talks. The meeting’s prospects outlined on Sunday, February 8, after phone talks of the heads of the Normandy Four. On February 10, representatives of the self-proclaimed republics submitted to the Ukrainian side their proposals to settle the situation in eastern Ukraine. After that, a pause was announced until the morning of February 11. The Contact Group’s meeting in late December 2014 ended with no major results. The meeting scheduled for January 16, 2015 did not take place as no representatives of Kiev arrived in Minsk. A regular meeting of the Contact Group on Ukrainian settlement occurred January 31 and ended without visible results. East Ukraine developments Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have fled Ukraine’s embattled east as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev’s military operation, conducted since mid-April 2014, to regain control over parts of the breakaway territories, which call themselves the DPR and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). The parties to the Ukrainian conflict mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) agreed on a ceasefire at talks on September 5, 2014 in Belarusian capital Minsk two days after Putin proposed his plan to settle the situation in the east of Ukraine. Since then, there have been numerous reports of violations of the ceasefire, which took effect the same day. The Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine comprising representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE adopted a memorandum on September 19, 2014 in Minsk. The document outlined the parameters for the implementation of commitments on the ceasefire in Ukraine laid down in the Minsk Protocol of September 5, 2014. The nine-point memorandum in particular envisioned a ban on the use of all armaments and withdrawal of weapons with the calibers of over 100 millimeters to a distance of 15 kilometers from the contact line from each side. The OSCE was tasked with controlling the implementation of memorandum provisions. Read more