EU, lidstaten en VS sturen geen bewindspersonen naar OVSE-bijeenkomst in Kiev (en)

BRUSSELS - The EU foreign service, most of the Union's big member states and the US are not sending top people to an OSCE meeting in Kiev on Thursday (5 December).

A spokeswoman for the EU foreign service chief, Catherine Ashton i, said her political director, Helga Schmid, will go instead.

France, Germany, the UK and Poland, whose foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, helped to mastermind a recently defunct EU-Ukraine treaty, are planning to send deputies.

US secretary of state John Kerry i on Tuesday also announced he will skip the meeting.

Ukraine is hosting the yearly event in its role as the current presidency of the Vienna-based pro-democracy club.

The meeting comes amid mass-scale protests and police violence in Kiev following Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's decision not to sign the EU association treaty.

Opposition parties in the Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday failed to get enough votes to call a motion of no confidence.

Yanukovych's Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov, apologised for police beatings, but also threatened further violence. "We extended our hand to you … If we meet with a fist, I’m telling you - we’ve got enough forces," he said.

The big EU countries frequently send deputies to OSCE ministerials.

Ashton did go to the last meeting, in Dublin in 2012.

Her spokeswoman told EUobserver on Wednesday her absence in Kiev has nothing to do with political developments in Ukraine.

"The high representative is meeting with Serbian and Kosovar leaders in Brussels. There is very little time, because she is to file a report on progress in the EU-facilitated dialogue [on Kosovo-Serb relations] for a general affairs council in two weeks time," Maja Kocjiancic said.

Kerry's decision is a calculated snub, however.

The US envoy was due to go to Kiev, but is now going to Moldova instead.

A US official told press on Tuesday he changed his mind because Moldova initialed an EU treaty last week. "Had that been the case with Ukraine, it would have been a tougher decision whether to go to the OSCE, but since that didn’t happen, we’re going where the European decisions were made," she said.

An EU diplomat told EUobserver that, on this occasion, the EU absentees also want to send a message that Yanukovych has lost Western support.

"He needs Western attention to counter pressure from Russia. But we should not be giving him any presents at this stage," the contact said.

Nato countries' foreign ministers in Brussels on Tuesday condemned Ukraine violence in a joint statement.

The OSCE itself has also criticised Yanukovych for what appear to be targeted beatings of foreign journalists in Kiev.

Some EU diplomats believe Yanukovych might still change his mind and sign the EU pact, for instance, in the margins of an EU summit in Brussels on 19 December, or at an EU-Ukraine summit in March.

Yanukovych's deputy PM is also drafting a detailed proposal for how much extra money Ukraine wants from the EU in return for a change of heart.

He is due to visit the EU capital in the next few days or weeks, but the date is not yet fixed.