MOSCOW. Aug 21 (Interfax) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Albanian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Edi Rama have discussed the Belarus situation in a phone call, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Lavrov and Rama touched on the subject in the context of proposals during the Albanian OSCE chairmanship to help dialogue between Belarus' authorities and opposition. Lavrov noted during the phone conversation that "the Belarusians should be allowed to handle their matters, and there should be no impediment to dialogue between the government and the society, nothing should be imposed from outside, and a repetition of the painful experience of 'European mediation' in Ukraine of February of 2014 should be avoided," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website.
"The sides confirmed the significant role of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in the efforts to settle the intra-Ukrainian conflict, including the need to prepare objective reports on what is happening on both sides of the contact line in Donbas," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The telephone conversation took place at the initiative of the Albanian side on Thursday.