By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Denmark would like to host a summit in July aimed at finding peace between Ukraine and Russia, but such a meeting would need engagement from India, China and Brazil, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said Monday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday sought global support at the G7 meeting in Japan for Kyiv’s plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and proposed to hold a global summit in July.
“If Ukraine finds that the time has come to have such a meeting, that would be fantastic. And then Denmark would obviously like to host the meeting,” Lokke Rasmussen told reporters on the sidelines of the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels.
A proposal in December by Ukraine to hold a peace summit in February this year never materialized.
“For starters, we need to put some effort into creating a global commitment to organise such a meeting,” Lokke Rasmussen said, adding that a summit should not just be attended by Ukraine’s allies.
“It is necessary to build interest and involvement from countries like India, Brazil and China,” he said. “It is hard for me to see” Russia taking part, he added.
Zelenskiy last year proposed a 10-point peace plan, which calls on Russia to withdraw all its troops from Ukraine and to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
The details of its implementation should be discussed at the proposed peace summit, Zelenskiy’s administration said in a statement on Sunday.
Lokke Rasmussen said he welcomed a decision by Washington to support joint allied training programmes for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets.
“It makes sense to begin training of Ukrainian pilots as soon as possible,” Lokke Rasmussen said, adding it was too early to say if Denmark would supply F-16s to Ukraine.
(Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; additional reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen; editing by Jason Neely and Nick Macfie)
