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Kaieteur News
Saturday March 08, 2014
Putin rebuffs Obama as Ukraine crisis escalates
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin (Reuters/RIA Novosti) M O S C O W / SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine (Reuters) - Russia said any U.S. sanctions imposed on Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine will boomerang back on the United States and that Crimea has the right to selfdetermination as armed men tried to seize another Ukrainian military base on the peninsula. In a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned against “hasty and reckless steps” that could harm RussianAmerican relations, the foreign ministry said yesterday. “Sanctions...would inevitably hit the United States like a boomerang,” it added. It was the second tense, high-level exchange between the former Cold War foes in 24 hours over the pro-Russian takeover of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said after an hour-long call with U.S. President Barack Obama that their positions on the former Soviet republic were still far apart. Obama announced the first sanctions against Russia on Thursday. Putin, who later opened the Paralympic Games in Sochi which have been boycotted by a string of Western dignitaries, said Ukraine’s new, pro-Western authorities had acted illegitimately over the eastern, southeastern and Crimea regions. “Russia cannot ignore calls for help and it acts accordingly, in full compliance with international law,” he said. Serhiy Astakhov, an aide to the Ukrainian border guards’ commander, said 30,000 Russian soldiers were now in Crimea, compared to the 11,000 permanently based with the Russian Black Sea fleet in the port of Sevastopol
before the crisis. Yesterday evening armed men drove a truck into a Ukrainian missile defense post in Sevastopol, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene. But no shots were fired and Crimea’s pro-Russian premier said later the standoff was over. Putin denies the forces with no national insignia that are surrounding Ukrainian troops in their bases are under Moscow’s command, although their vehicles have Russian military plates. The West has ridiculed his assertion. The most serious EastWest confrontation since the end of the Cold War resulting from the overthrow last month of President Viktor Yanukovich after protests in Kiev that led to violence escalated on Thursday when Crimea’s parliament, dominated by ethnic Russians, voted to join Russia.
U.S. says ready to do business with BJP’s Narendra Modi NEW DELHI (Reuters) The United States would welcome Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi if he wins the upcoming election, a U.S. official said, in the clearest sign Washington will drop a travel ban on Modi imposed after anti-Muslim riots in 2002. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal told a television interviewer that Washington was ready to do business with Modi, the front runner ahead of the AprilMay general election who is best placed to form a coalition government. “I would just say that the United States has welcomed every leader of this vibrant democracy, and that
a democratically elected leader of India will be a welcome partner,” Biswal told Headlines Today when asked if Modi, as prime minister, would be granted a U.S. visa. Biswal made her comments in New Delhi on a visit to rebuild trade and political ties shaken by a row over the arrest in New York last December of an Indian diplomat suspected of visa fraud. U.S. Ambassador to India Nancy Powell visited Modi at his home in Gandhinagar in Gujarat last month, ending a long estrangement over riots that erupted in the state governed by the Hindu nationalist leader. At least 1,000 people,
most of them Muslims, were killed in 2002 when mobs went on a rampage across Gujarat after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was torched, killing 59 people. Powell’s visit was the highest-profile encounter between U.S. officials and Modi since the State Department revoked his visa in 2005 over the bloodshed to which rights activists say he turned a blind eye. He denies the allegation. Biswal said the United States hoped India would continue to build a tolerant, moderate and secular society when asked if Washington had put its human rights concerns on the back burner because of Modi’s political rise.