Kiev to prioritize security, humanitarian issues at talks over Donbas crisis: official

KIEV, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- Kiev will prioritize the security and humanitarian issues at this year's meetings of the Trilateral Contact Group on the settlement of the situation in Ukraine's eastern region of Donbas, a Ukrainian government official said on Thursday.

"Our key tasks for 2018 are the implementation of the security and the humanitarian provisions," Irina Gerashchenko, a representative of the Ukrainian government in the humanitarian subgroup of the Contact Group, wrote on Facebook.

Among the main areas in focus for Kiev, she listed the comprehensive ceasefire, the release of all hostages, the intensification of the search for missing persons and the withdrawal of weapons from the contact line.

Besides, during the talks of the Contact Group, the Ukrainian government will insist on resuming the work of Zolote checkpoint, a key checkpoint to civilian traffic in Lugansk region, Gerashchenko said.

The trilateral contact group is a group of representatives from Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that was formed as means to facilitate a diplomatic resolution to the armed conflict in the Donbas region.

Representatives of pro-independence insurgents also participate in the meetings of the group.

Thanks to the efforts of the diplomatic body, more than 30 rounds of ceasefire were established in Donbas, helping to ease hostilities and reduce casualties in the almost four-year-old conflict.

Besides, the Contact Group, which usually meets in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, has assisted in carrying out several prisoner swaps between the conflicting parties.

The conflict between government troops and independence-seeking insurgents in eastern Ukraine has been raging since April 2014, claiming some 10,000 lives. Enditem