Officials persist with ‘unity talks’
KWestern diplomats have hailed the process for putting the interim government and some of its domestic critics in one room.
The parties agreed to pass on to parliament a 12-point “Memorandum of Understanding to restore order in our country” that could include a pledge to change the constitution to extend more power to Ukraine’s regions, grant a limited amnesty to separatists, condemn the unlawful use of weapons and secure the status of the Russian language.
Mikhail Dobkin, a former governor of Kharkiv and a longtime ally of fallen president Viktor Yanukovych, said that if such a bill passes, the next step should be the Ukrainian military’s withdrawal from the east and a move by separatists to lay down their arms.
Such a deal still appeared far off, but Dobkin said that successful passage of a good-faith measure in parliament would send the right message.
Yesterday, participants again took turns venting, expressing divergent views in front of rolling cameras. Easterners complained of Kiev’s highhanded treatment of their region, while officials of the interim government extended an olive branch, promising to address demands for decentralizing power by ceding more authority to Ukraine’s regional IEV, Ukraine — Government officials, dignitaries and representatives from eastern Ukraine held a second round of talks on national unity yesterday, even as tensions remained high in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions near the border with Russia. • The discussions took place in the eastern city of Kharkiv, after an inaugural session in Kiev on Wednesday that produced little sign of a breakthrough. capitals.
The transfer of some power is a key demand, particularly in the heavily ethnic Russian east. But just how to carry it out, as well as how much power to cede, remains hotly in debate.
Under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a Vienna-based body that includes European powers as well as the U.S. and Russia, the talks are being strongly supported by the West as a way to start a national dialogue on the future of Ukraine after the political upheaval of recent months.
The talks also are aimed at de-escalating tensions in the east, where pro-Russia separatists have seized government buildings and clashed with the Ukrainian military.
The separatists are not taking part in the talks, however, and it remained unclear to what extent representatives from the east could influence the separatists to lay down their arms.
The roundtable talks took place as the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, a pro-Russia group in the east that has seized official buildings in the region, reiterated a call to emulate Crimea and be absorbed into the Russian Federation — a call that thus far has sparked no action from Moscow.
In Washington yesterday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki described such actions as illegal. “Any decisions made about Ukraine must be taken by those with lawful authority, representing the citizens of Ukraine as a whole, and not under threat of foreign military intervention,” she said.
In a thinly veiled threat against Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, who began dispatching his factory workers to the streets this week to restore the peace in a handful of eastern cities, the Donetsk separatists’ leadership also threatened to seize the assets of oligarchs.
“We are not against private property, and we have no intention of depriving anyone of their private property,” Alexander Borodai, the self-described prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said yesterday, according to the Interfax news service. “However, there are some political circumstances — some oligarchs who are trying to play their own game here and are political figures and are collaborating with the enemy — and so expropriation is an open issue.”
Borodai also ruled out talks with Kiev representatives until all Ukrainian “occupation” forces were withdrawn.