Pro-Russian separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine pledged safe access Friday for investigators seeking to enter the crash zone of a downed Malaysia Airlines jet, international monitors in the region said, but the Ukrainian government said the rebels were still keeping all but local emergency workers away from the site.
World leaders reiterated calls for an immediate international investigation into what U.S. officials said was a surface-to-air missile attack that brought down the Boeing 777 in a grassy field and killed all 298 people on board. The victims included leading experts in AIDS research en route from Amsterdam to a conference in Australia via Kuala Lumpur.
The United Nations Security Council, of which Russia is a permanent member, was scheduled to hold an emergency meeting Friday to discuss the strike.
The move came as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko addressed the nation early Friday, blaming pro-Russian separatists and their Russian masters — charges that the Russians and separatists both denied.
“War has gone beyond the territory of Ukraine,” Poroshenko said. “Consequences of this war have already reached the whole world.” He later referred to recordings of what the Ukraine Security Service said were intercepted phone conversations between separatist rebels and Russian intelligence officials that implicated them in the shootdown.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called for swift, international justice.
“This is a crime against humanity. All red lines have been already crossed. This is the deadline,” he said. “We ask our international partners to call an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting and to [do] everything we can to stop this war: a war against Ukraine, a war against Europe, and after these terrorists shot down a Malaysian aircraft, this is the war against the world.”
He added: “Everyone is to be accountable and responsible. I mean everyone who supports these terrorists, including Russians and the Russian regime.”
A rebel leader on Thursday had briefly claimed responsibility for downing a jet that he described as a Ukrainian military aircraft. Soon after it was established that a commercial airliner had been shot down, the claim was removed. However, on Friday, separatists and the Russians denied any responsibility.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Vienna-based body coordinating a dialogue in the conflict, said talks through video conference had yielded security guarantees and that an international team was expected to enter the area later Friday or Saturday morning. But there were conflicting reports on whether rebels truly intended to grant access to the site to more than emergency workers.
Source- The Washington Post
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