Obama: Missile left rebel turf

He also cites Russia fault in loss of jet

Ukrainian coal miners help search the area Friday near the village of Rozsypne in eastern Ukraine where a Malaysia Airlines jetliner went down Thursday.

Ukrainian coal miners help search the area Friday near the village of Rozsypne in eastern Ukraine where a Malaysia Airlines jetliner went down Thursday.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama said Friday that the United States believed that the Malaysia Airlines jetliner felled over eastern Ukraine had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile from an area inside Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed separatists. He demanded a prompt international inquiry as signs emerged that separatists were impeding an assessment of the crash site by outside monitors.

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Obama's remarks at the White House were the strongest public suggestions yet from the United States about who was responsible for the downing of the plane, which exploded, crashed and burned Thursday on farmland in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 -- Flight 17, from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- was at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet on a commonly used air route over eastern Ukraine when it was struck Thursday.

Obama said the loss of life was an "outrage of unspeakable proportions" and a "global tragedy." He vowed to investigate exactly what had happened to end the lives of "men, women, children, infants who had nothing to do with the crisis" in the region. He also said that at least one American was among the dead.

"We are going to make sure the truth is out," Obama said, referring to what he described as a trove of misinformation that had already shrouded the plane crash.

"We don't have time for propaganda," he said. "We don't have time for games."

The president said the violence in the region must not obstruct an independent investigation of the plane's destruction, and he called on Russia, Ukraine and the Russian-backed separatists to agree to an immediate cease-fire.

"Evidence must not be tampered with," Obama said. "Investigators need to access the crash site. And the solemn task of returning those who were lost onboard the plane to their loved ones needs to go forward immediately."

While separatists guarding the crash site allowed some Ukrainian government rescue teams to enter and begin collecting bodies, they were less cooperative with a team of monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe who wanted to secure a safe route for the investigation and salvaging operations.

photo

AP

A team of monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe talk with a pro-Russia militiaman at the scene of the Malaysia Airlines crash Friday near Hrabove in eastern Ukraine.

Obama spoke after Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said at an emergency Security Council meeting on the Ukraine conflict that there was "credible evidence" that pro-Russia separatists and their Russian associates in eastern Ukraine were responsible for the crash.

Both Russia and the separatist groups deny any responsibility, and some rebel leaders suggest that Ukraine's armed forces may have shot down the plane.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has implicitly blamed Ukraine's government, saying it created the conditions for the separatist uprising that has escalated into a major crisis. But he didn't accuse Ukraine of shooting the plane down and didn't address the key question of whether Russia gave the rebels such a powerful missile.

Putin on Thursday urged that "all sides in the conflict should halt their fighting and enter into peaceful talks," according to an official website. He also called for a "thorough and unbiased" inquiry into the disaster.

Putin also spoke with the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, who broke off a vacation after learning that the greater number of those who died in the crash were Dutch. The Netherlands has declared a national day of mourning for the nearly 200 Dutch citizens killed in the crash.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared on the main state-run satellite network, Rossiya 24, to deny Russian involvement and to demand an "open, independent" investigation into the downing of the jetliner.

"We shall be prepared to make our contribution, but in our opinion the initiative should be taken by the authorities of the country on the territory of which the tragedy has taken place," Lavrov said.

He dismissed accusations from the Ukrainian government that Russia was responsible.

Obama said the United States did not know who had fired the missile, but he made clear that he held the Russians responsible for failing to stop the violence that made the downing possible.

"This certainly will be a wake-up call for Europe and the world that there are consequences to an escalating conflict in eastern Ukraine -- that it is not going to be localized, it is not going to be contained," Obama said.

He spoke with Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia, whose country lost at least 28 citizens in the crash. Abbott has said the Russian response to the crash was "deeply, deeply unsatisfactory."

Obama also has spoken with several world leaders since the crash, including Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to discuss possible responses to the crisis.

Merkel on Friday pressed Russia to work harder toward a political solution in Ukraine. But she also drew a line between the Russians and the separatists, saying that "the Russian president, of course, has an influence," but "still one has to differentiate between the separatists and the Russian government."

On Wednesday, both the United States and the European Union imposed new sanctions on Russia, but the European moves were significantly less stinging.

European governments have generally been more reluctant than the Americans to slap tougher sanctions on the Russians, largely because of Moscow's economic clout in the region.

Elsewhere, retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Friday blamed the Ukrainian government in Kiev for the downing of the plane.

Castro wrote in state media opinion column that the plane was flying over territory "under the control of the bellicose government of the chocolate king Petro Poroshenko," using the nickname of the Ukrainian president, who leads a large confectionary business.

Response in U.N.

In her remarks at the U.N., Power said, "We assess Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 carrying these 298 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was likely downed by a surface-to-air missile, an SA-11, operated from a separatist-held location in eastern Ukraine." She said the United States could not "rule out technical assistance by Russian personnel" in operating the system.

Power joined Obama in calling for an immediate international investigation, and she warned that the separatists and those supporting them would have "good reason to cover up evidence of their crime." The U.S. has called for evidence from the crash site to remain in Ukraine until investigators determine who is responsible.

Asked later to respond to the U.S. accusations of Russian support, Vitaly Churkin, Russia's U.N. ambassador, declined to comment.

The 15-member Security Council called unanimously for a "full, thorough and independent international investigation" into the cause of the crash. Jeffrey Feltman, the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, told the council that 80 children were among the dead.

Power's assertions were echoed by two senior Defense Department officials who said the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that an SA-11 missile, fired from an area near the Russia border, had downed the plane.

That conclusion was based on an analysis of the launch plume and trajectory of the missile as detected by a U.S. military spy satellite. The analysis did not pinpoint the origin of the missile or identify who launched it. But a senior Defense Department official said the Americans believed the missile had been launched "from several kilometers inside the Ukrainian border."

Ukrainian officials, who have called the downing a terrorist attack carried out by the separatists, have referred to the missile by a different name, Buk M1.

"The analysts are still trying to get detailed granularity on that," a senior Pentagon official said of the satellite imagery. "Those are the million-dollar questions."

Russia's Defense Ministry, in denying any responsibility, noted that units of the Ukrainian army possessed the Buk M1 launchers. Much of the speculation surrounding the crash has focused on that system, particularly because the pro-Russia separatist forces bragged on social media in late June that they had taken possession of a Buk system after capturing a Ukrainian military base.

There was also no indication Friday of a motive, though most U.S. analysts have concluded that the missile operators believed they were firing at a Ukrainian military plane, not a civilian jetliner.

U.S. officials identified the American passenger known to have been aboard as Quinn Lucas Schansman, 19, a dual citizen of the United States and the Netherlands. Officials said they were still working to confirm whether any other U.S. citizens were onboard.

The U.S. State Department said the FBI and the National Transportation Security Board were each sending at least one agent to Ukraine, and perhaps more later, to assist with the crash investigation.

In Kiev, the Ukraine's Foreign Ministry announced that it planned to transport the victims to a special laboratory in the northeast city of Kharkiv, outside of rebel control, and was arranging visas and free hotel accommodations in Kiev and Kharkiv for relatives of the victims.

Ukrainian officials also said that some of the work of emergency responders at the crash site, near the mining town of Grabovo, had been hindered by the separatists but that workers had recovered 181 bodies by midday Friday.

The victims included vacationers, students and a large contingent of scientists. The 298 passengers came from at least 13 countries, spreading the impact of the Ukraine crisis around the globe.

Rocket witnesses

The crash remained the subject of intense debate in Grabovo as residents tried to come to grips with what had unfolded in the fields where they work, just yards from their homes.

Two villagers said that they had seen the flash of a rocket in the sky around the time the plane went down. A man named Victor, who declined to give his last name, said that he had been in his garden at the time and he had seen "the light coming from a rocket."

He said it had come from the direction of Snizhne, a city where the Ukrainians have been bombing rebel positions frequently for more than a week. "It was a rocket, I'm sure of it," he said.

The other villager, Sergei, 15, who also declined to give his last name, said he had been swimming in a nearby river when he saw what appeared to be a rocket being launched into the sky. He said he had jumped out of the water, hopped on his motorbike and sped home.

As a cloudy dawn came, the full horror in the field was on display. Small white pieces of cloth dotted the grassy farmland, marking the spots of bodies.

Four rebels in fatigues wandered through the ruins, looking through people's belongings, guidebooks and bags. Asked who was responsible for the crash, they looked incredulous and said that it had of course been the Ukrainian military.

"This wasn't ours," said a rebel who identified himself only as Alexei, looking at an overhead bin in the grass with a rifle over his shoulder. "Why would we do this? We're not animals."

Ukrainian intelligence officials have pointed to a fighter named Igor Bezler, the militia leader in the eastern town of Gorlovka, saying he was heard in an intercepted phone call saying that his men had "shot down a plane" on Thursday.

In Malaysia, there was mourning on a Ramadan Friday. Malaysians, shocked at the loss of a second Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 -- it has been just four months since Flight 370 disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur -- wondered openly why Flight 17 had been flying over an area where increasingly powerful surface-to-air missiles were being used.

In a statement delivered before dawn in Kuala Lumpur, Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia noted that the International Civil Aviation Organization had declared the airspace safe and that the International Air Transport Association had not restricted travel there.

Ukrainian and European air traffic controllers had continued to route civil flights over the contested area even as the fighting worsened and even as flights directed by Russian controllers had apparently started to avoid it.

Information for this article was contributed by Michael D. Shear, Somini Sengupta, Sabrina Tavernise, Eric Schmitt, Keith Bradsher, Christopher Buckley, Alan Cowell, James Kanter, Dan Bilefsky, Michelle Innis, Melissa Eddy and Neil MacFarquhar of The New York Times; by Julie Pace, Robert Burns, Joan Lowy, Josh Lederman, Lara Jakes, Peter Leonard, Dmitry Lovetsky, Yuras Karmanau, Mstyslav Chernov, Nataliya Vasilyeva, Laura Mills, Mike Corder and Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press; and by Karen DeYoung and Anthony Faiola of The Washington Post.

A Section on 07/19/2014