EU foreign ministers Radoslaw Sikorski (C, front row) of Poland, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (C-L, front row) of Germany, and Ukranian opposition leaders Arseniy Yatsenyuk (C, back row) and Vitaliy Klitschko (L, back row), near the Presidential office in Kiev, Friday afternoon, 21 February 2014. Photo: EPA: Sergey Dolzhenko
Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski returned to Warsaw on Friday evening after two days of brokering tense negotiations between President Viktor Janukovych and opposition leaders.
“I intend to honour this agreement, which in point six says that EU foreign ministers will firmly appeal to both parties in the conflict to refrain from violence,” he said at a press conference in Warsaw.
“I appeal to all responsible Ukrainians in this agreement to give it a chance, because it has already yielded good fruit,” he said.
As the UK's ITN recorded, tempers frayed during the negotiations, with Sikorski pleading with opposition leaders to accept the peace deal, including early elections, with the government or “you'll have martial law, you'll have the army, you'll all be dead."
Earlier, Sikorski told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily that in his bid to convince opposition leaders to come to an agreement, he used, “all arguments, including those emotional ones from our own Polish history, with our successful and unsuccessful bids for freedom.”
Sikorski, who brokered talks together with the French and German foreign ministers, Laurent Fabius and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said that the mood went up and down during the talks.
“We were all working in the shadow of a vast number of victims, [with the violence] happening just metres away,” he said.
Lieutenant-General Yuri Dumansky, deputy head of Ukraine's general staff, resigned on Friday morning claiming that "the armed forces of Ukraine are being drawn into a civil conflict."
The armed forces of Ukraine are being drawn into a civil conflict. - See more at: http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/162822,Pause-in-Kiev-clashes-as-agreement-hammered-out#sthash.832EjQtM.dpuf
Minister Sikorski noted that President Yanukovych, who Reuters reports has fled Kiev after protesters occupied his office - “turned pale” at one stage during the talks.
“This is a stressful time for him,” Sikorski said. “It was a dynamic situation, in which he kept changing his mind.
“We managed to convince him to do something which at the beginning he absolutely did not want to agree to, namely to shorten his [presidential] term,” he added.
"The agreement is just the beginning of a political process. It will pave the way for a new government that is to reclaim control over the country and gain enough authority to push through reform," Sikorski was also quoted as saying.
"This step is to, in turn, enable the country to obtain EU funds necessary to bring Ukraine's European integration back on track."
In other developments, jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko will soon be released in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, where she is being treated in hospital, her daughter Yevgenia Tymoshenko announced on Saturday.
"According to Ukrainian law my mum is already a free person," Yevgenia Tymoshenko told reporters following a vote in parliament to speed up procedures for her release, Reuters reports. (nh/pg/ab)