OSCE Wants to Create Group to Support Ukraine
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe plans to set up an international group to support the transition of crisis-hit Ukraine, its current head said Monday.
Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter, whose country assumed the rotating chairmanship of the 57-member body last month, said the group would include Kiev and "key" global actors.
"The main task of the proposed contact group would be the support of Ukraine in its transition period," Burkhalter told the United Nations Security Council.
Hosted and moderated by the OSCE, he said it "would serve as a platform for coordination and sharing information on international assistance and project activities in Ukraine."
Burkhalter, speaking during a debate about cooperation between the OSCE and the U.N., also said he had appointed Swiss diplomat Tim Guldimann as his personal envoy to Ukraine.
Burkhalter said a small OSCE team had been sent to Ukraine to conduct a "needs-assessment mission."
And he urged Kiev's leadership to invite a human rights assessment mission to "establish the facts and circumstances of the incidents that took place in Ukraine."
Protests against now ousted president Viktor Yanukovych's decision to spurn an historic pact with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia came to a head last week.
The Ukrainian parliament has now ousted the president, but the OSCE, which has helped oversee political transitions in several post-Soviet countries, foresees much work ahead.
Headquartered in the Austrian capital Vienna, the OSCE operates by consensus and counts countries from Europe, North America and Central Asia -- including Ukraine -- as its members.
Source: Agence France Presse
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