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Foreign minister: armed mission a "leap into future" for OSCE

"Nothing like that has ever happened in the history of the OSCE."

An armed mission will be a great challenge for the OSCE, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said 13 December in an interview to Interfax-Ukraine.

"For the OSCE, it will be a leap into the future. Nothing like that ever happened in the history of the OSCE. The OSCE is in a rather serious crisis since the work of the OSCE has been absolutely consciously blocked by countries like Russia in all areas, including human rights, security, etc.," the minster said

"For the OSCE it is also bound to be a logistical and financial challenge. The budget of the SMM mission today is almost on par with the budget of whole OSCE. Thus, we need to understand how this is going to work," Klimkin went on.

The foreign minister said that one of the solutions to the financial side of the issue is the involvement of the UN.

"I have discussed this with the newly elected UN Secretary General António Guterres and asked him to talk this issue over with all other key UN players. The OSCE should rely on the United Nations resources," he said.

The minister also complained that the Russian side is deliberately delaying the negotiation process on the settlement of the situation in Donbas, waiting for a change in the leadership and negotiators in the United States, France and Germany.

"The current parties to the "Normandy format" know all the ropes around the subject, so Russia wants the key politicians, for whom [the Donbas settlement] is not just a political issue, but are emotionally involved, to be out of the game," Klimkin said.

Ukraine has asked the OSCE to deploy military posts on the border with the Russian Federation. After that, the militants responded threats of a "full-scale war, into which the West will be drawn into."

Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed with the proposal of Ukraine to deploy armed police mission in Donbas along the demarcation line rather than on the border of Ukraine with Russia.

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