Vitaly Churkin – praag.org

Too many omissions in Dutch report on MH17

No real international investigation of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine has been conducted, Russia’s UN envoy, Vitaly Churkin, said, adding that there are too many blank spots in the newly released Dutch report on the tragedy.

The document, released by the Dutch Safety Board’s Tjibbe Joustra (DSB) on Tuesday, said that the Malaysian Boeing-777 crash was the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that struck it from the outside.

“It is very hard to call this investigation a truly international one. Many questions have been left unanswered. There are too many omissions,” Churkin said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 channel.

The Dutch report “did little to advance our understanding of what happened,” only confirming what was already known before, he stressed.

It says that the Malaysian plane “didn’t fall by itself, but was shot down. However no further thoughts in this regard are being presented,” the envoy said.

According to Churkin, Dutch investigators have also completely ignored the issue of at least one Ukrainian warplane that reportedly was in midair near the Malaysian plane when the disaster occurred on July 17.

“The report says another three commercial airliners were cruising in the vicinity at the moment of tragedy, but it does not say anything if Ukrainian warplanes were there, too. Our Defense Ministry said at least one military jet might have been there and eyewitnesses also say they saw one or two jets in the sky,” Churkin stressed.

“For some reason however the problem is bypassed,” he added.

It also looks “very strange” that the text of the DSB report doesn’t say a word about the UN Security Council’s resolution on MH17, the envoy said.

The Russian envoy also wanted to know the reasons for the 40-day delay in delivering the recordings of the conversation between air traffic controllers and the jet from the Ukrainian side to the investigators.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin, repeated the call for more transparency in the MH17 crash investigation as he met with Malaysian defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, in Moscow on Tuesday.

During the meeting, it was “noted that the [Dutch] probe was incomplete,” the Russian Foreign ministry said in a statement.

Moscow believes that “very important expert examinations have actually not been conducted on the crash site. Without them, valid conclusions on the reasons of what happened are impossible.”

The ministry pointed out that some expert examinations are already impossible to carry out now due to protraction of investigation.

“Russia insists on maximally transparent work of the international commission, fulfilling all norms of ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) and is ready to participate in it on a team basis,” the statement said.

All 298 people aboard the Malaysia Airlines jet died as it crashed in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on July 17. The majority of those on the plane – which was allegedly shot down – were citizens of the Netherlands.

The disaster has prompted NATO to become more deeply involved in the Ukraine conflict, blaming Russia despite a glaring lack of evidence.

It was initially alleged that the plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. However, claims were also made that the flight was shot down by a Ukrainian military jet which was in the area at the same time.

War in Eastern Ukraine catastrophic envoy warns

The situation in eastern Ukraine was described as a catastrophic, full-blown war by Russia’s UN envoy, Vitaly Churkin, during the latest UN Security Council meeting. Russia has also called for an international humanitarian mission to be launched.

Fighting between Kiev’s army and self-defense forces intensified on Tuesday, with the Ukrainian military using heavy weaponry around Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. According to witnesses, the Ukrainian army resorted to multiple rocket launchers, including Uragan launchers and cruise missiles, RIA Novosti reported citing local militia.

Cruise missiles were spotted flying over the city of Gorlovka on Tuesday, while Uragan launchers were seen near the town of Snezhniy, witnesses told the news agency. Explosions reportedly caused by airstrikes were also heard within the city of Donetsk.

Amid the increased violence, Russia called for an emergency UN Security Council session on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine on Tuesday.

Russia’s UN envoy proposed the deployment of an international humanitarian mission, along with Russian humanitarian aid under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“We propose to send convoys of Russian humanitarian aid under the auspices of the ICRC, to Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as other towns in Ukraine, where internally displaced persons are concentrated in the eastern regions,” Churkin said.

He noted that eastern Ukrainians urgently require food, medicine, medical equipment, water purification systems, and electricity generators.

“By any human standards, the situation in the east, especially in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, is catastrophic,” Churkin said. “Today with certainty we can and should be talking about a real war – the International Committee of the Red Cross officially acknowledged the internal armed conflict in the east of Ukraine.”

“Artillery, tanks, as well as rockets are used. There is continuing information from locals about the use of phosphorus bombs and cluster bombs,” Churkin added. “There is indiscriminate shelling of housing blocks and critical civilian infrastructure. In many small towns about 80 percent of houses have been destroyed, according to most conservative estimates. More than 600 buildings have fallen.”

Pro-US Kiev indiscriminately shells residential Lugansk

The humanitarian situation in Ukraine needs to be addressed immediately, without the usual “theoretical exercises” from the UN Security Council’s “usual suspects,” ambassador Vitaly Churkin said after a closed-door meeting on a Russian draft resolution.

“The draft is not politicized and is of a purely humanitarian nature,” Churkin told reporters in New York, stressing that the document is aimed at “alleviating human suffering.”

“Every day civilians get killed, among them women and children,” Churkin said. “Ukrainian military and paramilitary forces impede the peaceful population, leaving besieged cities or sending their children to safe places. Buses of children are turned back.”

A swift reaction is absolutely necessary, Churkin said, as Kiev continues its full scale military operation in southeastern Ukraine with “heavy and indiscriminate shelling of residential areas” using both artillery and aviation.

Just on Tuesday alone, at least eight civilians were killed in a Ukrainian air raid on a local administrative building in Lugansk, the aftermath of which was shown in numerous horrific videos posted online.

Yet authorities and pro-Kiev media deny the incident, even claiming that self-defense forces were behind the attack on their own headquarters.

Churkin said the new draft demands “an immediate cessation of hostilities, urges parties to commit themselves to sustainable ceasefire, and calls for the establishment by the parties of humanitarian corridors in order to allow the civilian population to leave safely and to ensure humanitarian assistance.”

British Ambassador to the UN Mark Lyall Grant and his French counterpart, Gerard Araud, dismissed the call.

“We must be clear that the crisis in Ukraine is a political security crisis. It’s not a humanitarian crisis,” Lyall Grant told reporters.

Source: RT

Western powers poised to pressure Syria

Everything is ‘abundantly clear’ to William Hague

Western powers were poised Tuesday to press their efforts for a UN resolution to rid Syria of chemical weapons, one day after a report by the world body describing a “chilling” sarin gas attack there.

United Nations experts, without assigning blame, said they had gathered “clear and convincing evidence” that surface-to-surface rockets took sarin gas into the opposition-held Damascus suburb of Ghouta on August 21.

The United States had threatened a military strike on Syria over the attack, which it said killed more than 1,400 people.

Washington said responsibility for the attack rests squarely with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“The technical details of the UN report make clear that only the regime could have carried out this large-scale chemical weapons attack,” said Washington’s UN ambassador Samantha Power. “It defies logic to think that the opposition would have infiltrated the regime-controlled area to fire on opposition-controlled areas.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said there was “no doubt” that government forces were to blame, while British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the report made “abundantly clear” that the Syrian regime was behind the attack.

France and Britain will soon send a draft resolution to other Security Council members demanding a threat of sanctions if Assad does not keep to a disarmament plan and for the chemical attacks to be referred to the International Criminal Court, diplomats said.

The council, meanwhile, is expected to start negotiations this week.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria as “a war crime” as the country’s conflict again spilled into neighboring nations, with Turkey saying it had shot down a Syrian military helicopter.

Ban said the report prepared by the experts “makes for chilling reading.”

He added that the use of sarin had been proved “unequivocally and objectively” and that the Ghouta attack was “the most signficant” with chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein unleashed poison gas in Halabja, Iraq, in 1988, killing thousands.

“The environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used” in Ghouta, said the report by UN inspectors who were in Syria when the attack was staged.

The experts concluded that “chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, also against civilians including children on a relatively large scale.”

A separate UN-mandated independent human rights inquiry announced separately on Monday that it was investigating 14 alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

Ban would not say on Monday who had carried out the attack.

“We may all have our own thoughts on this, but I would simply say that this was a grave crime and those responsible must be brought to justice as soon as possible,” Ban told reporters.

On Friday, he said Assad had “committed many crimes against humanity.”

While the United States, Britain and France all insist that the findings show Assad’s forces had used the weapons, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said after a Security Council meeting on the report that there should be more investigation into who was responsible.

Moscow has sided with Assad in blaming opposition rebels for the chemical assault.

The UN experts’ report will now become a key weapon in a Security Council battle over how much of a threat must be made against Assad to make him disarm.

The French, US and British foreign ministers called for a “strong” resolution after a meeting in Paris.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “If Assad fails to comply with the terms of this framework, make no mistake we are all agreed, and that includes Russia, that there will be consequences.”

Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed a plan on Saturday under which Syria’s chemical weapons would be eliminated by mid-2014.

Russia has agreed the plans must be backed by a Security Council resolution but rejects any move to include the threat of force into a UN text.

Lavrov said such threats could kill off hopes of a peace conference on the 30-month-old conflict in which more than 110,000 people, according to activists.

Kerry was due to meet Thursday to discuss the issue with his counterpart from China, which has welcomed the agreement but has sided with Russia in its resolve to veto any UN Security Council resolution against Syria.

Fighting has worsened in Syria as the diplomatic wrangling goes on and Turkey said it shot down a Syrian military helicopter on Monday after it entered Turkish airspace.

The Syrian MI-17 helicopter was detected two kilometers (1.2 miles) inside Turkish airspace and shot down by two F-16 jets five minutes later after failing to heed warnings, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told reporters.

“It was continuously warned by our air defense,” Arinc said, adding there was no information about the fate of its crew because the helicopter fell on Syrian soil.

Arinc said Turkey has changed its military rules of engagement in response to repeated gunfire from the Syrian side. – Sapa/AFP