OSCE believes monitors are okay

A spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's special monitoring mission in Ukraine told reporters in Kyiv on Sunday that the organization remained out of contact with a four-member international team seized by gunmen in Donetsk on Monday as well as four European monitors and a local translator who were taken in Luhansk on Thursday.

However, the spokesman, Michael Bociurkiw, said the OSCE was confident that it would soon secure the monitors' release.

"We're engaged in dialogue on a wide number of levels. We've been on the ground in that region for about two months now and we're well known to many people who hold sway in those areas so we're in a good position, we feel, to get our colleagues back to base," he said.

He also said he was confident that the monitors had not been harmed.

"We're working through a number of channels and there's positive signals from those that they're OK," he said, without providing further details.

There has been sporadic fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in both the Donesk and Luhansk regions in recent days. The OSCE monitors, who entered the region on the request of all OSCE-member states, including Russia and Ukraine, have been viewed with suspicion by the rebels.

A team of monitors seized by pro-Russian separatist gunmen in late April were branded by their captors as "prisoners of war" and held in the rebel stronghold of Slavyansk for more than a week before being released on May 3. One member of the team, who was suffering ill-health had been released after two days.

pfd/kms (Reuters, AFP)