EU Ministers Say Observers Needed in Ukraine
The European Union needs to send observers to Ukraine as soon as possible, foreign ministers from the bloc's 10 eastern European and Nordic members plus Iceland and Norway said Friday.
"To help Ukraine in this period of transition, we support the establishment of a European Union led Observation Mission, which should be deployed as soon as possible," they said in a joint statement following ministerial talks in Estonia's eastern city of Narva.
"The situation in Ukraine is critical," they added, underscoring their "strong support" for tighter EU ties with Moldova and Georgia and the signing of an EU association deal with Ukraine in the "nearest possible future".
The statement came as top lawmakers in Moscow welcomed the prospect of Ukraine's majority-Russian Crimean peninsula joining Russia amid the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.
Russian forces have surrounded Ukrainian military bases in Crimea, while local lawmakers have decided to renounce ties with Ukraine and stage a March 16 referendum on switching over to Kremlin rule.
Military observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) trying to enter Crimea on Friday were again stopped at a checkpoint blocking a road into the peninsula, an Agence France Presse reporter said, after gunmen had earlier prevented them from crossing one of the roads.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who attended the Narva meeting, told AFP Friday that an EU monitoring mission in Ukraine was "urgently needed", specifically as it "looks like Russia wants to block any serious monitoring effort by the OSCE".
Echoing the United States and the EU, the ministers also slammed "the decision to hold an illegitimate referendum in Crimea".
Ministers from the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Slovakia and Sweden attended the talks in Narva, which is located by the Russian border.
A former Soviet republic, Estonia broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991 along with fellow Baltic states Lithuania and Latvia.
In 2004, all three joined the EU and NATO to secure their independence from Russia.
Source: Agence France Presse
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