Merkel to the Rescue....Heroine coming...Putin Agrees to meet!
Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted a proposal by Chancellor Angela Merkel to set up a “contact group” aimed at facilitating dialogue in the Ukraine crisis, the German government said on Sunday.
“President Putin accepted the German chancellor’s proposal to immediately establish a mission of enquiry as well as a contact group, possibly under the direction of the the United Nations Security Council or OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), to open a political dialogue,” German government spokesman Georg Streiter said in a statement.
Merkel raised the idea in a phone conversation late Sunday in which she accused Putin of breaking international law with the “unacceptable Russian intervention in Crimea.”
A Kremlin statement said Putin defended Russia’s action against “ultranationalist forces” in Ukraine and insisted measures taken so far were “fully adequate,” the Associated Press reported.
It said Putin directed Merkel’s attention to the “unrelenting threat of violence” to Russian citizens and the Russian-speaking population.
However, it didn’t mention specifically Merkel’s proposal, but highlighted the need to continue “consultations in both a bilateral ... and multilateral format with the aim of cooperating to normalize the socio-political station in Ukraine.”
Merkel told Putin the intervention was a violation of a 1994 Budapest memorandum on security assurances in which Russia committed itself to respecting the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine in its existing borders, as well as the 1997 treaty on the Russian Black Sea fleet, based in Crimea, Agence France-Presse reported.
The memorandum was signed by Britain, Ukraine, Russia and the United States.
The statement said Merkel called on Putin to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/02/us-ukraine-crisis-germany-g-idUSBREA210Q620140302
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EXCERPT
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