DUSHANBE, March 12, 2014, Asia-Plus – Permanent Plenipotentiary Representatives of the CIS Member Nations to the CIS Charter and Other Bodies have supported the proposal to hold a meeting of the CIS deputy foreign ministers in Minsk, Belarus on March 14 to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

The CIS Executive Committee press center says that during an extraordinary meeting in Minsk, the CIS plenipotentiary representatives on March 11 voiced the positions of their states on Ukraine’s initiative to hold an extraordinary meeting of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers.

Following a lengthy discussion, the CIS plenipotentiary representatives agreed: "In the absence of the consent of the majority of the CIS member nations for convening a Ukraine initiated extraordinary session of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers in Kyiv on March 12, 2014 we supported the proposal to hold a meeting of deputy foreign ministers in Minsk on March 14 to discuss the situation in Ukraine.”

This decision was reportedly signed by Ivan Bunechko, Ukraine’s Plenipotentiary Representative to the CIS Coordinating Institutions, who chaired the meeting of the CIS plenipotentiary representatives in Minsk.