I/III. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/kerry-and-lavrov-to-discuss-ukraine-syria-at-paris-meeting/501489.html
Kerry and Lavrov to Discuss Ukraine, Syria at Paris Meeting - Reuters - Jun. 04 2014 09:28 - Last edited 09:28 - United States Mission Geneva / FlickrJohn Kerry will meet with Sergei Lavrov to discuss the crises in Ukraine and Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Paris on Thursday to discuss the crises in Ukraine and Syria, a spokeswoman has said. "The focus of the discussion will be on Ukraine given the upcoming inauguration on Saturday, as well as Syria and the ongoing effort to remove the remaining chemical weapons," spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters. The talks come as Ukraine prepares to inaugurate President-elect Petro Poroshenko and a U.S. delegation led by President Barack Obama heads to France to attend celebrations on Friday to mark the 70th anniversary of the World War II D-Day landings. Kerry's meeting with Lavrov will be on the sidelines of the Obama visit to France. Russian President Vladimir Putin will be at the D-Day events, but he will not meet Obama, U.S. official say. While tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine have scuttled cooperation between Washington and Moscow in most areas, both countries are still working together to make sure Syria hands over its stockpile of chemical weapons. Syria is months behind schedule and still has roughly 8 percent of 1,300 metric tons of chemical weapons it declared to the UN's nuclear watchdog. It is unlikely that Syria will meet a final deadline of June 30 to destroy its entire toxic stockpile. II/III. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/un-council-discusses-russian-proposal-on-ukraine/501358.html UN Council Discusses Russian Proposal on Ukraine - Reuters - Jun. 03 2014 08:58 - Last edited 08:58 Lucas Jackson / ReutersRussia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin. Russia has circulated a draft UN Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian corridors in eastern Ukraine but said Western council members raised so many questions about the text that Moscow would now contemplate what its next move would be. The 15-member council met briefly on Monday behind closed doors to discuss the one-and-a-half page draft resolution, which calls for an end to the worsening violence in southeastern Ukraine and for safe and unhindered humanitarian aid. "There was some positive reactions from some members of the council. However, others were asking so many questions that if we were to try to answer them then we would be talking about things for weeks," Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, president of the Security Council for June, told reporters after the meeting. "We have not yet decided what out next move is going to be in terms of working on this resolution," he said. Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Moscow of fueling a pro-Russian uprising that threatens to break up the former Soviet republic of 46 million people. Russia denies orchestrating the unrest and says Ukraine's attempts to end it by military force are making the situation worse. "We must be clear that the crisis in Ukraine is a political security crisis. It's not a humanitarian crisis," British UN Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters. Lyall Grant and his French counterpart, Gerard Araud, said there were key elements missing from the Russian draft. "There were things missing like the reference to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine for instance, the right of Ukraine to defend its territorial integrity," said Araud, adding that a UN report on the humanitarian situation was needed as he was unaware "there was a major crisis." The U.S. called the Russian proposal hypocritical because at the same time armed fighters and weapons were entering Ukraine from Russia, and Russian-backed separatists were attacking new targets and holding hostage monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE. "So if they are going to call for or would support a reduction in tensions and a de-escalation, it would be more effective for them to end those activities," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in Washington. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier Monday that Western nations had assured Russia the situation in Ukraine would improve after its May 25 presidential election but that "everything is happening in exactly the opposite way." "People are dying every day. Peaceful civilians are suffering more and more -- the army, military aviation and heavy weapons continue to be used against them," Lavrov said. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke to newly elected Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko over the weekend and urged him to initiate a dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday. III. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/fighting-rages-between-army-and-separatists-in-eastern-ukraine-town/501476.html Fighting Rages Between Army and Separatists in Eastern Ukraine Town - Reuters - Jun. 03 2014 21:18 - Last edited 21:19 Efrem Lukatsky / APA Ukrainian soldier patrolling an area outside of Slavyansk on Tuesday. Fighting raged in eastern Ukraine for the second straight day on Tuesday as the Army rolled out an offensive against pro-Russia separatists holding the city of Slavyansk and claimed to have inflicted losses on the rebels. Rebels in the town, a fierce separatist stronghold where a military helicopter was shot down last week killing 14 servicemen, said they had brought down a Su-25 attack aircraft and a helicopter, but this was denied by Ukrainian authorities. The fighting in Slavyansk followed a day-long fire-fight on Monday in Luhansk, a town further east on the border with Russia, after an attack by separatists on a border guard camp. At least two people were killed in the city center of Luhansk, which like Slavyansk is under separatist control, by a blast which rebels said came from a Ukrainian air strike but which the Ukrainians said was caused by a misfire of a heat-seeking missile by the rebels. Reports of fresh fighting coincided with Ukraine announcing that 59 servicemen had been killed in clashes with rebels since hostilities broke out in the east in April. "In Donetsk and Luhansk regions 181 people have been killed and 293 wounded by terrorist activity including 59 servicemen," general prosecutor Oleh Makhnitsky told a news conference. Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern regions which border on Russia have been riven with separatist armed rebellions for the past two months. The Kiev government says the fighting is fomented by Russia, which opposes its pro-Western policies, and accuses Russia of allowing volunteer fighters to cross into Ukraine to fight alongside the rebels. Active Phase "At the present time the active phase of the "anti-terrorist operation" is going on near Slavyansk. The [separatist] fighters are being blocked. If they refuse to lay down their arms they will be destroyed," said Vladyslav Seleznyov, a spokesman for the military operation. "Our job is to establish peace in the region and this we will do," he said. He could not confirm reports of wounded on the Ukrainian side around Slavyansk, but he said there were preliminary reports of dead and wounded among the separatist fighters. "Information that Ukrainian planes and helicopters have been shot down are not true. Yesterday one of the helicopters received holes from small arms fire," he said. Defense analyst Dmytro Tymchuk, who is recognized as having good military sources, said separately that one person had been killed on the Ukrainian side and 13 others wounded when a Ukrainian military column was attacked on its way to Slavyansk from its base in Izyum, to the north-west. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. 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