Berlin says Ukraine rebels' election plans harm peace process

Plans by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine to hold local elections in November would undermine a ceasefire agreement reached in Minsk and destabilise the situation, the German foreign ministry said on Friday.     

"The separatists' announcement of plans to hold so-called parliamentary elections on Nov. 2 is clearly a violation of the Minsk agreement of Sept. 5 and damages the fragile peace process," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Sawsan Chebli.         

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says Kiev and "the whole world" will not recognise such a vote. Ukraine proposes local elections, under government supervision, in December in eastern areas where rebels have set up "people's republics".        

Chebli added that Germany saw no reason to relax sanctions against Russia as long as the Minsk agreement is not being fully implemented.     

Also on Friday, a senior Kremlin official said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko have discussed the possibility of meeting, either alone or with the leaders of Germany and France.

Foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, who gave no dates for the possible meeting or meetings, also said remarks by U.S. President Barack Obama at the U.N. General Assembly looked "strange". In a speech, Obama addressed problems facing the world including Russia's involvement in the Ukraine crisis.

Senior Ukrainian and Russian military officials met on Friday to mark out a proposed 'buffer zone' in eastern Ukraine from which government forces and separatists will pull back artillery and other heavy armaments, Ukrainian military officials said.         

The officials said a three-party group, which also included 76 Russian military and representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), met north of the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.          

Envoys from Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE agreed at a meeting in the Belarussian capital of Minsk on Sept. 19 to establish a 30-km (19-mile) buffer zone and pull heavy weaponry out of the area to build on a ceasefire that was declared on Sept. 5.