MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th August, 2023) The meeting on Ukraine in the Saudi city of Jeddah has not produced a plan for a peace settlement, leaving the Chinese peace plan as a viable option, Joost Niemoller, a Dutch journalist and author, told Sputnik.
Saudi Arabia hosted peace talks on Ukraine in Jeddah over the weekend, having invited representatives from some 30 countries, but not Russia. The Jeddah meeting is a follow-up to a similar conference held in Denmark in June. The Copenhagen meeting failed to produce any joint statements.
"It is always good to try to find new ways forward to a negotiation that could end the Ukrainian conflict, but none of the delegates that congregated in Saudi Arabia could have believed that the conference might have any success in reaching a real peace proposal," Niemoller said, adding that he believes much more in the proposal that China made a few months ago.
He suggested that the Saudis could have convened the Jeddah meeting because of their concerns over the deterioration of security situation in the African region of Sahel.
"What is possible is that Saudi Arabia is worried (about) ... the potential unraveling of the political architecture of the countries of Africa, in the Sahel region first, then West Africa and north of the Sahara, the Maghreb region, then progressively to the whole middle East. The local conflicts we see now in the Sahel could get worse," Niemoller argued.
In February, China released a 12-point document titled "China's Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis," which underscores respect for the sovereignty of all countries, the cessation of hostilities, and the resumption of peace talks between Moscow and Kiev. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that some of the provisions of the plan could be a basis for a peace settlement "if the West and Kiev are ready for it." Ukraine has consistently rejected all foreign-proposed peace plans in favor of its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's plan, which demands security guarantees for Kiev and a return to the pre-2014 borders.
