David Cameron expressed anger about the shooting down of
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in a telephone conversation with
Vladimir Putin on Sunday as EU leaders started preparing fresh sanctions against Moscow for its alleged role in the attack.
Ten
Britons died when flight MH17 was shot down with a missile on Thursday
and sources indicated that Cameron was furious that it took the Russian
president three days to respond to his request for a telephone
conversation.
The US secretary of state,
John Kerry, made the clearest accusation against
Russia to date over its involvement in the missile attack, which killed 298 people.
"We
have enormous input about this that points fingers," Kerry told CNN.
"It is pretty clear that this was a system from Russia, transferred to
separatists. We know with confidence that the Ukrainians did not have
such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point of time."
He
said satellite imagery showed that "at the moment of the shootdown we
detected a launch from that area. Our trajectory shows that it went to
the aircraft."
Kerry added that
video evidence showed a Buk missile launcher,
the anti-aircraft weapon believed to have hit the airliner, being
driven over the Russian border after the attack, with at least one of
its missiles missing.
After the call between Cameron and Putin,
Downing Street said: "The prime minister spoke to President Putin this
evening and made clear that the shooting down of MH17 was totally
unacceptable. The evidence suggested that pro-Russian separatists were
responsible and the prime minister made clear that if Russia wants to
put the blame elsewhere they would need to present compelling and
credible evidence.
"The PM made clear that our priority is to get
experts to the crash site so they can recover and repatriate the victims
and collect any evidence necessary for the investigation. The PM
emphasised that the families of 298 individuals need to know that
everything is being done to make this happen and called on President
Putin to use his influence on the pro-Russian separatists to ensure this
happens. The delay and restrictions so far were completely unacceptable
and indefensible."
There is mounting fury in the EU – and more widely – that crucial
evidence is being removed and the bodies of the dead are being allowed to decompose because the separatists and their Russian allies are obstructing a full, independent investigation.
Earlier,
Cameron, who will make a statement to MPs about the crisis , spoke to
the Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and François Hollande, the
French president. The three leaders agreed that "the EU must reconsider
its approach to Russia" and that EU foreign ministers would consider
further sanctions at a meeting on Tuesday, No 10 said.
A
government source said the French and German position on sanctions had
shifted since last week. "They are all very clear that a plane has been
shot out of the sky and that all the evidence points to it being the
work of Russian separatists, and that therefore the EU should impose
further measures," the source said.
In an interview on the BBC's
the World this Weekend, Philip Hammond, the new foreign secretary, said a
range of measures would be considered.
"Arms sales is something
we need to look at," he said. "An investment ban on investment in the
Crimea, sending a clear signal that we will not tolerate the illegal
annexation of Crimea, broadening the number of individuals who are
subject to sanctions to include the so-called 'crony group' around
President Putin."
Monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, who have been in eastern
Ukraine
to observe the conflict between government and rebel forces, have been
allowed on the scene, a few miles east of Donetsk, but specialist air
crash investigators from around the world were still in Kiev on Sunday
night, awaiting guarantees of safe passage to the site.
Dianne
Feinstein, the head of the Senate foreign relations committee in the US,
said: "The nexus between Russia and the separatists has been
established very clearly." In a direct and personal challenge to the
Russian premier, she added: "So the issue is, where is Putin? I would
say, Putin you have to man up. You have to say this was a mistake, which
I hope it was."
The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, spent
the day calling western leaders to ask them to list the main rebel
organisation in the east of the country, the Donetsk People's Republic
(DNR), as a terrorist organisation, which would mean that any country
providing support would risk being sanctioned as a state sponsor of
terrorism.
In a conversation with Hollande, Poroshenko said the
downing of MH17 was comparable with terrorist attacks by al-Qaida and
the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103.
The EU has already imposed
sanctions on 72 people – both Ukrainian and Russian nationals – and two
organisations for violating Ukrainian territorial integrity. One of
those on the list is Igor Strelkov, the DNR's "defence minister", who
Ukraine says is a serving officer in Russian military intelligence named
Igor Girkin.
The toughest line at Tuesday's foreign ministers
meeting in Brussels is likely to come from the British and French, but
most of all from the Dutch, who have lost 192 of their citizens.
The
UN security council was last night considering a draft resolution to
condemn the shooting down of the plane, demand armed groups allow
unfettered access to the crash site, and call on states in the region to
cooperate with an investigation.
Australia despatched its foreign
minister, Julie Bishop, to New York to push for a UN Security Council
resolution. It is unclear whether Russia intends to veto it.
Australia
– which lost 28 citizens – circulated a draft text to the 15-member
security council and UN diplomats said it could be put to a vote as
early as Monday.
The draft resolution "condemns in the strongest
terms the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 ... resulting
in the tragic loss of 298 lives" and demands those responsible "be held
to account and that all states cooperate fully with efforts to establish
accountability".
It "expresses grave concern at reports of
insufficient and limited access to the crash site and of tampering with
evidence related to the incident" and demands "armed groups in control
of the crash site and the surrounding area refrain from any actions that
may compromise the integrity of the crash site and immediately provide
safe, secure, full and unfettered access."
Australia's prime
minister, Tony Abbott, said that Bishop would stay at the UN "for as
long as she needs to be" to get investigators access to the black box,
the debris and witnesses.
"We owe it to the dead, all the dead, we
owe it to the families, all the families to do everything in our power
to respect the bodies, to find the truth and to ensure justice is done,"
Abbott said in a television interview.
Jason had one of the biggest urban/pop hits in “Talk Dirty,” received
