<\/p>\n
The Black Sea grain corridor designed to ensure the safe supply of Ukrainian food to world markets has not yet resumed operation despite statements by Turkey and Russia on extending the agreement, a senior Ukrainian official said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The deal has been extended for two more months, in what U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hailed on Wednesday as \u201cgood news for the world,\u201d a day before Russia could have quit the pact over obstacles to its grain and fertiliser exports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was announced yesterday, but so far these statements have not led to the resumption of work and the joint centre in Istanbul did not inspect vessels for entry yesterday or today,\u201d Yuriy Vaskov, Ukraine\u2019s deputy restoration minister told Reuters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expected it to be yesterday immediately after the statements of our partners. We are expecting the partners\u2019 position today and believe that they will be able to resolve this issue,\u201d he told in an interview.<\/p>\n
He said 62 vessels are ready for inspection and some of them have been standing by for several months.<\/p>\n
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan announced the extension in a televised speech on Wednesday and it was later confirmed by Russia, Ukraine and the United Nations.<\/p>\n
The United Nations and Turkey brokered the deal for an initial 120 days in July last year to help tackle a global food crisis that has been aggravated by Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, one of the world\u2019s leading grain exporters.<\/p>\n
Ukraine to seek \u201cappropriate steps\u201d<\/strong> It wants the West to remove obstacles to the export of Russian grain and fertiliser, including the reconnection of Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank) to the SWIFT payment system.<\/p>\n Other demands include the resumption of supplies of agricultural machinery and parts, lifting restrictions on insurance and reinsurance, the resumption of the Togliatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline and the unblocking of assets and the accounts of Russian companies involved in food and fertiliser exports.<\/p>\n Vaskov, however, said Ukraine does not link Russia\u2019s demands and the Black Sea grain initiative because neither Ukraine nor Turkey, as parties to this initiative, have signed any agreements with Russia.<\/p>\n He said this is a Russian \u201cparallel relationship with the UN\u201d, while the Ukrainian side is fulfilling everything that it signed in the Black Sea agreement.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Ukraine is expected to take any additional steps to improve global food security, Ukraine will also demand appropriate steps regarding Ukrainian producers,\u201d Vaskov said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you ask about the ammonia pipeline, it should be seen through the prism of Ukrainian interests, not that the pipeline should work and Ukraine gets nothing from it.\u201d<\/p>\n He declined to give more details.<\/p>\n (Reuters – Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Hugh Lawson)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Black Sea grain corridor designed to ensure the safe supply of Ukrainian food to world markets has not yet resumed operation despite statements by Turkey and Russia on extending the agreement, a senior Ukrainian official said on Thursday. The deal has been extended for two more months, in what U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hailed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/33756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Moscow had initially appeared unwilling to extend the pact unless a list of demands regarding its own agricultural exports was met.<\/p>\n