Brussels, September 2
President Vladimir Putin has said that Russian forces could conquer the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev in a fortnight if he so ordered, the Kremlin has confirmed. Moscow declined to deny that Putin had spoken of taking Kiev in a phone conversation Friday with Jose Manuel Barroso, the outgoing president of the European Commission, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.

Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy adviser, on Tuesday said the Barroso leak had taken Putin's remarks out of context.

"This is incorrect, and is outside all the normal framework of diplomatic practice, if he did say it. This is simply not appropriate for a serious political figure," he said of the Barroso leak, according to the Russian Interfax news agency.

EU leaders held a summit Saturday to decide who should run the union for the next five years. The session, however, was quickly preoccupied by Putin's invasion of Ukraine and how to respond.

Barroso told the closed meeting that Putin had told him Kiev would be an easy conquest for Russia, according to La Repubblica, the Italian newspaper.

According to the account, Barroso asked Putin about the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. NATO says there are at least 1,000 Russian forces on the wrong side of the border. The Ukrainians put the figure at 1,600.

"The problem is not this, but that if I want I'll take Kiev in two weeks," Putin said, according to La Repubblica. Without denying Putin's remarks about Kiev, the Kremlin complained about the leak of the Barroso remarks.

Meanwhile, Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, also attended the EU summit and painted an apocalyptic picture of the conflict.

German chancellor Angela Merkel, the main mediator with Putin, was said to be furious with the Russian leader, warning that he was "irrational and unpredictable", while British Prime Minister David Cameron was said to have raised the issue of Britain discussing policy options regarding Putin. — IANS

Amerli, September 2
Iraqi forces made more progress today in their fightback against jihadists, but in Baghdad anger boiled over as hundreds stormed Parliament over the fate of missing soldiers who surrendered in June.

After breaking a months-long jihadist siege of the Shiite Turkmen town of Amerli by Islamic State (IS) fighters, troops on Tuesday regained control of part of a key highway linking Baghdad to the north.

Two towns north of Amerli were also taken from the jihadists on Monday as Iraqi forces, backed by US air strikes, score their first major victories since the army's collapse across much of the north in June.

That collapse left some 1,700 soldiers in jihadist hands, with many believed to have been executed.

Demanding to know their fates, angry relatives stormed parliament in Baghdad, attacked MPs and began a sit-in in its main chamber, an official said.

Anti-riot police were trying to evict the hundreds of protesters, who were also calling for some officers to be held accountable, said the official, who was present at parliament.

Concern over those in jihadist hands has been fuelled by reports of widespread atrocities, including accusations from Amnesty International of war crimes and ethnic cleansing.

The Sunni extremist IS declared an Islamic "caliphate" in regions under its control in Iraq and Syria after it swept through much of the Sunni Arab heartland north of Baghdad in June and then stormed minority Christian and Yazidi Kurdish areas. — AFP

Kuala Lumpur, September 2
Malaysia today said that returning to the crash site of flight MH17 to facilitate criminal investigations remains a priority for it and is committed to seeking justice for the victims travelling on the ill-fated plane.

"We need to do all we can to access the location to facilitate criminal investigations into the tragedy," defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said here.

The Malaysian government is committed to seeking justice for the victims, he said. However, he pointed out the site in Eastern Ukraine is still a war zone.

"It will be a miracle if we are successful because of the ongoing geopolitical conflict but we have done the impossible before," he said after a ceremony to honour nine more MH17 victims whose remains arrived back from Amsterdam.

He said what they needed was for those involved to agree to a ceasefire at that location to allow for investigators to work.

Hishammuddin added there had been some closure for the families of victims, whose remains had been brought back but 11 Malaysians were still missing or yet to be identified. — PTI

Maiduguri, September 2
Islamist Boko Haram insurgents have overrun much of a northeastern Nigerian town after hours of fighting that has killed scores and displaced thousands of residents, several security sources said on Tuesday.

The Islamists launched an attack on the town of Bama, 70 km from the Borno state capital of Maiduguri, on Monday. They were initially repelled but came back in greater numbers overnight, the sources and witnesses said.

Nigeria's defence spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The sources said there were heavy casualties on both sides. One security source said as many as 5,000 people fled the town.

In a bungled air strike, several Nigerian troops were killed at the Bama armoury by a fighter jet targeting the insurgents, a soldier on the ground told Reuters.

Two months after Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria declared the area they seized an Islamic caliphate, Boko Haram has also for the first time explicitly laid claim to territory it says it controls in parts of northeast Nigeria.

They captured the remote hilly farming town of Gwoza, along the Cameroon border, during fighting last month. The group's leader Abubakar Shekau in a video declared it a "Muslim territory" that would be ruled by strict Islamic law.

Shekau's forces have killed thousands since launching an uprising in 2009 to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in religiously mixed Nigeria, and are seen as the biggest security threat to the continent's leading energy producer.

"When we started hearing gunshots, everybody was confused. There was firing from different directions. We just ran to the outskirts of town," Bukar Auwalu, a trader who fled with his wife, three children and brother, told Reuters by phone.

Because of Bama's proximity to Maiduguri, a large metropolis and home of a major army base, security officials are worried there is now little to keep Boko Haram from gaining access to a key city that was also the birthplace of their movement.

Boko Haram got itself in the international spotlight on April 14, when its fighters kidnapped more than 200 girls from a school in Chibok in April. They remain in captivity. — Reuters

DUBAI, September 2 
The Islamic State militant group released a video purporting to show the beheading of US hostage Steven Sotloff, the SITE monitoring service reported on Tuesday.

A masked figure in the video also issued a threat against a British hostage, a man the group named as David Haines, and warned governments to back off "this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State", the monitoring service said.

Sotloff, a freelance journalist, was kidnapped in Syria in August 2013. His mother Shirley appealed on August 27 in a videotaped message to Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, for her son's release. On August 19, the group released a video showing beheading of US hostage James Foley. — Reuters

Melbourne, September 2
Ahead of his visit to India, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott today strongly supported sealing of the much-awaited uranium export deal with the country under “suitable safeguards”.

“I make the point if we are prepared to sell uranium to Russia, and we’ve been prepared to do that in the past, surely we ought to be prepared to provide uranium to India under suitable safeguards,” Abbott said. “India is a fully functioning democracy with the rule of law,” he said, adding that his government was working with India to put suitable safeguards in place.

He said Australia should be prepared to provide “support” and that is what his upcoming visit would be all about. Abbott will arrive in Delhi on September 4 to further strengthen the strategic partnership. — PTI