ALJAZEERA AMERICA: Ukraine’s president announced Monday that government and Moscow-backed rebel forces have pulled back most of their heavy weapons in the east, but just a day later monitors said both sides were stalling on other terms of a cease-fire deal.
Slow progress has been made in the arms-withdrawal process, a key measure agreed to at high-level talks last month that installed a cease-fire with the goal of ending Ukraine’s separatist crisis. Over 300 monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, are overseeing the removal, but monitors have complained that neither is fully cooperating…
Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the OSCE mission in Ukraine, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that both sides have obstructed monitoring efforts to some degree. He said that the OSCE has observed the withdrawal of most weapons and that the organization have been able to track most convoys as they fall back. But he said they are often prevented from accessing where the weapons end up… (more)
