PARIS (Reuters) – European powers told the United States last week which aspects of a potential peace deal between Ukraine and Russia would be non-negotiable for them, ahead of a new round of discussions on Wednesday, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said.
Ukraine, the U.S., France, Britain and Germany held their first joint talks since President Donald Trump came to power on Thursday in Paris, sharing their views on ways to end the more than three-year-old war.
Senior officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will meet again in London on Wednesday.
“The only objective that concerns us is to defend French interests and European security. It’s the reason that as the US decide to place itself in a mediator position that we make them hear what our “red lines” are,” Barrot told franceinfo radio on Tuesday, referring to issues that the European leaders would not budge on. He did not elaborate.
Asked whether he thought that Trump’s assertion that a peace deal could be announced this week was credible, Barrot said it depended on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I think that the (Easter) truce which he (Putin) decreed somewhat surprisingly was a marketing operation, a seduction operation aimed at avoiding that President Trump gets impatient,” Barrot said.
Despite repeated violations of the truce, he said there had at least been a drop in intensity regarding drones and long-range missiles, which could perhaps open the door for a further truce.
(Reporting by John Irish, editing by GV De Clercq and Bernadette Baum)
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