Brussels, 07/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 7 September, France's President François Hollande announced that he would propose to his German, Ukrainian and Russian counterparts - Angela Merkel, Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin - that they meet before the end of the month to discuss developments in the conflict in Ukraine and implementation of the Minsk agreements.
“The foreign affairs ministers of the four countries will be able to talk in the coming days and I will propose that a meeting in the Normandy format might be held in Paris before the United Nations General Assembly [Ed: which takes place at the end of the month] so that we might assess where the process stands and conduct it to its end”, Hollande stated during a press conference. In Brussels, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said that the ministers were expected to meet at the end of the week.
Speaking about the Minsk agreements, Hollande said he believed there had been “progress in recent weeks”. “The ceasefire is almost respected (…) the withdrawal of heavy weapons is continuing”, he said, underlining the vote on decentralisation at the Ukrainian Parliament. The peace process provided for in the Minsk agreements is due to run “until its end”, Hollande stated. The agreements provide for measures until December 2015. “It will be important that we go right to the end of the commitments on the elections, on the autonomy legislation of decentralisation for the regions in the east of Ukraine and, if this process comes to a successful end, I will call for the lifting of sanctions because this was the condition that was laid down”, he added (our translation). The EU's economic sanctions against Russia are in force until the end of January 2016. (Camille-Cerise Gessant)