Minister for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini took part in a conference call today on the Ukraine crisis, whose other participants included 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.
Discussions centred on the delicate steps of the coming days and efforts 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.
“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.
