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Europeans give Putin ‘last chance’
Two Israeli soldiers
killed in Gaza clash |
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Europeans give Putin ‘last chance’ Hrabove/Donetsk, July 19 As militants kept international monitors away from wreckage and scores of bodies festered for a third day, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the rebels to cooperate and insisted that a UN-mandated investigation must not leap to conclusions. Moscow denies involvement and has pointed a finger at Kiev's military. The Dutch government, whose citizens made up more than half the 298 aboard MH17 from Amsterdam, said it was "furious" at the manhandling of corpses strewn for miles over open country and asked Ukraine's president for help to bring "our people" home. After US President Barack Obama said the loss of the Kuala Lumpur-bound flight showed it was time to end the conflict, Germany called it Moscow's last chance to cooperate. European powers seemed to swing behind Washington's belief Russia's separatist allies were to blame. That might speed new trade sanctions on Moscow, without waiting for definitive proof. "He has one last chance to show he means to help," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said after a telephone call to Putin. Britain, which lost 10 citizens, said Prime Minister David Cameron agreed with Rutte that the European Union, warier than Washington of hurting its own economy by imposing sanctions, should reconsider its approach due to evidence of rebel guilt. On Friday, Cameron had urged caution before an investigation. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the most powerful figure in the EU, spoke to Putin on Saturday, urging his cooperation. Merkel's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper: "Moscow may have a last chance now to show that it really is seriously interested in a solution." "Now is the moment for everyone to stop and think to themselves what might happen if we don't stop the escalation." Germany, reliant like other EU states on Russian energy and more engaged in Russian trade than the United States, has been reluctant to escalate a confrontation with Moscow that has revived memories of the Cold War. But with military action not seen as an option, economic leverage is a vital instrument. Russian retaliation
Russia said on Saturday it was retaliating against sanctions imposed by the United States last week, before the air disaster, by barring entry to unnamed Americans and warned of a "boomerang effect" on US business. But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry did agree in a phone call to try and get both sides in Ukraine to reach a consensus on peace. Driving home its assertion that the Boeing 777 was hit by a Russian SA-11 radar-guided missile, Ukraine's Western-backed government said it had "compelling evidence" the battery was not just brought in from Russia but manned by three Russian citizens who had now taken the truck-mounted system back over the border.
— Reuters Relatives wait to fly to crash site
Amsterdam: Relatives of the 192 Dutch victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 are waiting near Amsterdam's Schiphol airport to fly to the crash site in Ukraine, the airline said on Saturday. "It's not yet known when the families will go," an airline spokeswoman said, asking not to be named. Relatives of the Dutch victims and others in Thursday's disaster over a rebel-held part of Ukraine are gathering at a hotel outside Schiphol, from where the doomed flight took off. Black box not found: Rebel leader
Kiev: Aleksandr Borodai, the pro-Russian rebel leader in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, denied on Saturday that black boxes of the Malaysian passenger plane that crashed on Thursday had not been found. Borodai said they had not touched the site where the passenger flight crashed but they reserved the right to begin the process of taking away the bodies since the bodies would decompose in the heat, according to
Xinhua. |
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Two Israeli soldiers
killed in Gaza clash
Gaza/Jerusalem, July 19 The Israeli military said four other soldiers were wounded in the raid by fighters who had used a concealed tunnel to reach Israel. One Hamas gunman was killed, while the rest of the group managed to escape back into the Gaza Strip, the military added. Israel sent ground forces into Hamas-controlled Gaza on Thursday after 10 days of air and naval barrages failed to stop rocket fire from the Palestinian territory. It has vowed to destroy the tunnel network and hunt down the militants' stockpiles of missiles. The land incursion has so far failed to subdue Hamas and its allies, who fired more than 90 rockets into Israel on Saturday, the Israeli army said. One killed a man and wounded two children in a southern Bedouin Arab village in Israel, police said. Diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire involving, amongst others, Egypt, Qatar, France and the United Nations, have failed to make headway. Hamas rejected an initial attempt by Cairo last week to end the fighting. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to travel to the region this weekend as part of a growing international efforts to end hostilities, while French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met officials in both Egypt and Jordan to discuss the crisis. — PTI
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