Negotiations on Ukraine Crisis Produce 'Road Map'

BERLIN—Negotiations on the Ukraine crisis here Wednesday produced an initial "road map" laying out specific steps to defuse the conflict, but brought no breakthrough.

The road map, based on the patchily implemented Minsk peace agreement of February 2015, is to be discussed in more detail in the coming weeks, said the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, who met in their first summit meeting on the Ukraine crisis in more than a year.

"We now have a starting document, but it still has many points of discord," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. "This is certain still to be very arduous."

Ms. Merkel and French President Franç ois Hollande met for more than four hours with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Officials had played down expectations ahead of the meeting, and Ms. Merkel said afterward that as predicted, the session had "worked no miracles."

The key points discussed Wednesday as part of the road map, the leaders said, were the sequencing of the security aspects of the Minsk agreement alongside the political steps, such as local elections, meant to bring the breakaway, pro-Russian regions in eastern Ukraine back into the fold.

"A lot of time was spent talking about security issues, and we agreed on a series of positions about what must be done in the near term in order to resolve questions in the longer term regarding disentangling the conflicting sides," Mr. Putin told journalists after the meeting, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Poroshenko said the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 57-country group that has monitored the security situation in Ukraine, could be expanded, possibly to include armed observers. Ms. Merkel, however, said that the agreed-on sequence stipulated that the process of local elections in the breakaway regions needed to move forward before the armed OSCE officials could appear.

Pro-Russian militants in eastern Ukraine have previously opposed an armed mission, saying that such a force would violate their sovereignty. Mr. Putin said Russia was prepared to "broaden" the OSCE mission, according to TASS.

The OSCE is a 57-country body whose members include Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. An armed mission would give the international community a greater role in the breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine currently controlled by pro-Russian separatists. The OSCE now has hundreds of unarmed civilian officials monitoring the security situation in Ukraine and has sought to mediate in the conflict.

Write to Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 20, 2016 02:05 ET (06:05 GMT)

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