Contact Group meeting in Minsk on Tuesday to focus on Donetsk, Luhansk elections - Poroshenko
KYIV. Sept 21 (Interfax) - The Contact Group will discuss local elections in Donbas at its meeting in the Belarusian capital on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.
"At the meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group, which will be held in Minsk tomorrow, we had an OSCE/ODIHR (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) representative in attendance, who set out his clear position which coincides with Ukraine's and we are for the elections in Donetsk and Luhansk to be very well prepared and all the preliminary conditions regarding the coverage by the Ukrainian media, the Ukrainian election commission, the removal of armed people because elections are not done under the barrels of machineguns, the elections must be transparent," Poroshenko told a press conference held jointly with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Lviv after the opening of the international Ukraine-2015 man-made disaster response exercise on Monday.
When asked how Kyiv would react if the breakaway parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions will hold their elections, Poroshenko said: "The reaction will be the same as to fake elections that are absolutely inconsistent both with international law and the Ukrainian laws and have no legal consequences. These elections are recognized by no one in the world, and therefore have no results, which is why they are fake."
He stressed that DPR and LPR elections are not up to OSCE standards and run counter to the Minsk agreements.
"The second position is that it greatly jeopardizes the Minsk agreements, just as the November 2 elections [held in the DPR and LPR in 2014] did significant damage to everything that was achieved under the Minsk protocol and the Minsk memorandum of September 5 and 19, 2014," Poroshenko said.
Ukraine's vision of the situation is that "elections must be held under Ukrainian laws," he said. "We forwarded a text about the elections, and if it has some features - it has - the first and main feature is the fact that a huge proportion - a million of the people living in Donbas - are temporarily displaced people, and they have no possibility of casting their vote," Poroshenko said.
The people loyal to Ukraine, who left Donbas, have no possibility of voting at present, he said. "It means that the result of the elections will be skewed, which is why we are ready for a discussion but these features must stipulate clear conformity with the OSCE/ODIHR requirements," the Ukrainian president said.
