|
 The train carrying around 200 body bags arrived in the eastern
city of Kharkiv, which is in Ukrainian government hands. The bodies
will then be taken back to the Netherlands to be identified.
The train left the crash site after the Malaysian prime minister
agreed with the separatists for recovered bodies to be handed over
to authorities in the Netherlands, where two thirds of the victims
came from.
The handover and reports by international investigators of improved
access to the wreckage of the airliner four days after it was shot
down, came amid calls for broader sanctions against Russia for its
support for the rebellion, although Western leaders are struggling
to agree on a response.
Early on Tuesday, senior separatist leader Aleksander Borodai handed
over the black boxes in the city of Donetsk.
"Here they are, the black boxes," Borodai told journalists at the
headquarters of his self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic as an
armed rebel placed the boxes on a desk.
Colonel Mohamed Sakri of the Malaysian National Security Council
said the two black boxes were "in good condition".
Shaken by the deaths of 298 people from around the world, Western
governments have threatened Russia with stiffer penalties for what
they say is its backing of pro-Russian militia who, their evidence
suggests, shot the plane down.
At the United Nations, the Security Council unanimously adopted a
resolution demanding those responsible "be held to account and that
all states cooperate fully with efforts to establish
accountability". It also demanded that armed groups allow "safe,
secure, full and unrestricted access" to the crash site.
"We owe it to the victims and their families to determine what
happened and who was responsible," said Australian Foreign Minister
Julie Bishop. Australia lost 28 citizens in the crash.
The Kremlin said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin spoke to
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte by telephone, with both giving a
"high assessment of the resolution passed by the U.N. Security
Council on the investigation into the catastrophe."
Meanwhile, European Union foreign ministers were scheduled on
Tuesday to discuss further penalties against Russia, but the most
they are expected to do is to speed up implementation of sanctions
against individuals, and possibly companies, agreed in principle
last week before the plane was brought down.
France is under pressure from Washington and London over plans to
deliver a second helicopter carrier to Russia.
Diplomats say more serious sanctions against whole sectors of the
Russian economy will depend largely on the line taken by the Dutch,
because of the high number of Dutch victims.
"It is clear that Russia must use her influence on the separatists
to improve the situation on the ground," the Dutch prime minister
said.
'WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO HIDE?'
U.S. President Barack Obama said it was time for Putin and Russia
"to pivot away from the strategy that they've been taking and get
serious about trying to resolve hostilities within Ukraine."
He said Putin and Russia had a direct responsibility to compel
separatists to cooperate with the investigation, and that the burden
was on Moscow to insist that separatists stop tampering with the
probe, he said. "What are they trying to hide?" Obama said at the
White House.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott described what was happening
at the scene as a cover-up.
"After the crime, comes the cover-up. What we have seen is evidence
tampering on an industrial scale and obviously that has to stop,"
Abbott told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.
[to top of second column] |
Russia's Defense Ministry has challenged Western accusations that
pro-Russian separatists were responsible for shooting down the
airliner and said Ukrainian warplanes had flown close to it. The
ministry also rejected accusations that Russia had supplied the
rebels with SA-11 Buk anti-aircraft missile systems - the weapon
said by Kiev and the West to have downed the airliner - "or any
other weapons".
Putin said the downing of the airliner must not be used for
political ends and urged separatists to allow international experts
access to the crash site.
His ambassador to Malaysia said the rebels did not trust the
Ukrainian government and that was why they did not want to hand over
the black boxes to them.
"This situation is quite unique, the area is a war zone. I think the
international community should be flexible about that and act in a
way acceptable to all sides," Lyudmila Vorobyeva said in a news
conference.
The International Air Transport Association said governments should
take the lead in reviewing how risk assessments for airspace are
made after airlines called for a summit to discuss the downing of
the airliner.
RECOVERY EFFORTS
European security monitors said gunmen stopped them inspecting the
site when they arrived on Friday, and Ukrainian officials said
separatists had tampered with vital evidence.
But the spokesman for the European security monitors said they had
unfettered access on Monday, and three members of a Dutch disaster
victims identification team arrived at a railway station near the
crash site and inspected the storage of the bodies in refrigerated
rail cars.
Peter van Vliet, whose team went through the wagons dressed in
surgical masks and rubber gloves, said he was impressed by the work
the recovery crews had done, given the heat and the scale of the
crash site. "I think they did a hell of a job in a hell of a place,"
he said.
As they went about their work, fighting flared in Donetsk, some 60
km (40 miles) from the site, in a reminder of the dangers the
experts face operating in a war zone.
Four people were killed in clashes, health officials said.
The rebels’ military commander Igor Strelkov said on his Facebook
page up to 12 of his men died in Monday's fighting.
(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Natalia Zinets and
Elizabeth Piper in Kiev, Jim Loney, Doina Chiacu, Ayesha Rascoe and
Mark Hosenball in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United
Nations, Allison Lampert in Montreal, Lincoln Feast and Matt Siegel
in Sydney, Al-Zaquan Amer Hamzah, Anuradha Raghu and Trinna Leong in
Kuala Lumpur; William James in London, Julien Ponthus, Elizabeth
Pineau and Emmanuel Jarry in Paris, and Gabriela Baczynska in Kiev;
Writing by Anna Willard; Editing by Giles Elgood)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
