Obtaining results from the channel of dialogue opened in Rome on the Ukraine crisis is the primary objective that Italy shares with the international community, as emerged from the conference call in which Minister Federica Mogherini took part yesterday with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, US Secretary of State John Kerry, EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Catherine Ashton, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird.
”Inevitable reactions’
“It was agreed that every possible effort had to be made to see to it that the channel of dialogue opened at the Rome conference leads to results”, asserted Minister Mogherini. “If this does not happen, also in light of Sunday’s referendum in Crimea, in the Foreign Affairs Council meeting on Monday in Brussels we will have to discuss the European Union’s inevitable reactions”, she continued. Contacts among the conference call participants will continue over the coming hours and into the weekend, especially in follow-up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s meeting in London with US Secretary of State Kerry.
Appeal to Moscow
The contacts and meetings in which Minister Mogherini has participated, in an attempt to maintain dialogue channels open in order to de-escalate the situation and form a contact group, with the participation of Moscow and Kiev, to avoid any further deterioration, follow on a G7 statement urging Moscow to “cease all efforts to change the status of Crimea contrary to Ukrainian law and in violation of international law”, recall its troops to the bases they were stationed at before the crisis and “begin direct discussions with the government of Ukraine, and avail itself of international mediation”.
