German FM in Ukraine to help broker dialogue

Germany's foreign minister flew to Ukraine today to help start talks between the Ukrainian government and its foes following the declaration of independence by two eastern regions.
Speaking at the Kiev Boryspil airport this morning, Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Germany supports Ukraine's efforts to arrange for a dialogue between the central government and its opponents in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions that form the nation's industrial heartland.
Steinmeier voiced hope for a quick release of hostages and freeing captured government buildings, and stressed the importance of the presidential vote on May 25.
Steinmeier's trip is intended to begin implementing a road map for settling the crisis laid out by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a top trans-Atlantic security and rights group.

Russia, which is an OSCE member, has welcomed its efforts to mediate the crisis and spoken in support of the road map.
Pro-Russian insurgents, who have seized government buildings and clashed with government forces during the past month, held a referendum Sunday, and claimed that about 90 per cent of voters backed sovereignty. The two regions declared independence yesterday.

Ukraine's acting president called the vote a sham and Western governments said it violated international law.
Insurgents in Donetsk even asked to join Russia, but the Kremlin has shown no immediate intention to subsume eastern Ukraine following Russia's earlier annexation of Crimea.

Instead, Moscow pushed for talks between Ukraine's central government and eastern regions in negotiations on Ukraine's future -- a cautious stance suggesting that Russia prefers a political rather than a military solution to its worst standoff with the West since the Cold War.
The OSCE plan presented yesterday by Swiss President Didier Burkhalter calls on all sides to refrain from violence and urges immediate amnesty, talks on decentralisation and the status of the Russian language.
Russia has welcomed the initiative, which reflects some key demands of insurgents who have denounced the central government as a "fascist junta" bent on trampling on the rights of Russian speakers.

Burkhalter said that the OSCE, which previously has deployed observers to Ukraine, will set up rapid response teams to quickly investigate all acts of violence.