KYIV. July 10 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) has prepared a bill on returning the state sovereignty over the areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk region, its submitting to the Verkhovna Rada is planned in September following consultations with Ukraine's strategic partners, NSDC Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov said.
"The NSDC office prepared the relevant law together with experts. We also involved representatives of the deputy corps and the coalition in it. The bill is ready but President [Petro Poroshenko] ordered to hold consultations with our strategic partners. First and foremost, this applies to the Normandy format member countries, Germany, France and the United States, our partners in NATO, in the issue of the content of this law," he said at a briefing following an NSDC meeting in Kyiv on Monday.
Turchynov said he hopes that the bill would be submitted to the Verkhovna Rada following the relevant consultations.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told reporters in Kyiv later on Monday that only the bill's concept rather than its text will be discussed with the international partners.
"It must be understood clearly that we're not going to discuss the text of a Ukrainian law with our partners, but its conceptual provisions in the context of the way we would cooperate, how we would determine [it], what legal status the occupied territories would have, how we would coordinate joint efforts," he said.
The parties will coordinate these joint efforts in the Normandy format among others, Klimkin said.