World

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Abdullah Gul said he would not seek a second term in office, further raising the likelihood that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would run for the top job.

“I will not present my candidacy... my term expires on August 28,” Gul told reporters ahead of a closed-door meeting with Erdogan in Istanbul, adding that he had already informed the premier of his decision before the local elections in March.

Already in his third term as prime minister — the maximum permitted under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)’s rules — Erdogan is widely expected to be unveiled on Tuesday as his party’s candidate for August’s presidential poll.

Gul, who assumed office in 2007, is tipped as a possible prime minister should Erdogan run in the presidential vote on August 10, the first time voters will directly elect the country’s head of state.

Asked whether he would consider the position of prime minister, Gul said: “Those are the things that we will talk about among ourselves later.”

Gul, who co-founded the AKP with Erdogan, had previously said he did not have any political plan for the future and had ruled out swapping jobs with the premier.

The presidency has until now been a largely ceremonial role but Erdogan has said he would exercise its full powers if he is elected — which could be a source of conflict between the premier and the president.

On Sunday, Turkey’s two main opposition parties formally backed Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, former head of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, to run against Erdogan.

KIEV — The leaders of Germany and France warned Vladimir Putin on Sunday that Russia could be hit with punishing sanctions within days unless he forced Ukrainian rebels Moscow is accused of backing to suspend their deadly uprising.

The French presidency said Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel made their case to the Russian strongman in a call that stretched for more than two hours and included Ukraine’s embattled pro-Western leader Petro Poroshenko.

The new Ukrainian president’s office said the four agreed to speak again on Monday when a truce is set to expire at 1900 GMT with no end to 13 weeks of fighting in sight.

The Ukrainian military reported losing five more soldiers over the weekend.

The second such teleconference in four days was arranged in Brussels on Friday when Poroshenko put his name to a historic trade deal with Europe that broke Kiev’s extended bonds with Moscow.

The European Union also used the occasion to issue an unusually firm statement telling Putin that he had until Monday to put explicit pressure on the separatist gunmen or face the possibility of entire sectors of Russia’s economy being cut off from the 28-nation bloc’s 500 million consumers.

The United States has promised to move in lockstep with Europe on Russian sanctions in the Cold War-style confrontation over the future of the strategic ex-Soviet state.

The French statement said Sunday’s call stressed “the importance of new concrete steps to stabilise the security situation on the ground, the extension of the ceasefire and the implementation of the peace plan presented by the Ukrainian authorities”.

It also cited Friday’s EU punitive measures threat and said the three leaders told Putin they “hoped that results are achieved by Monday.”

Conflicting demands

The Kremlin’s account of the conversation made no mention of the European conditions and stressed the joint call on Poroshenko not to resume his eastern campaign.

It also once again urged Ukraine to accept “immediate” Russian humanitarian aid in the conflict zone. Kiev suspects Moscow of planning to use such deliveries to smuggle arms to the rebel fighters.

The conflicting demands between Moscow and Kiev are also vividly reflected on the battlefield.

Separatist leaders say they will not engage in direct negotiations with Kiev until government forces withdraw from the heavily Russified east.

And Poroshenko refuses to meet rebel commanders who have “blood on their hands”.

The Western-backed head of state has also hinted that he may again resort to force should the guerrillas fail to disarm and cede control of state buildings across a dozen cities and towns.

Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of both arming and funding the militias in a bid to unsettle the new Ukrainian government as revenge for the February ouster of a pro-Kremlin president who had ditched the very EU agreement Poroshenko signed on Friday.

Ukraine’s worst crisis since its 1991 independence has now claimed 450 lives.

Russia’s ‘big brother’ approach

The possibility of the United States and Europe freezing access to Russia’s banking sector has already dented the country’s outlook and raised the possibility of the economy contracting for the first time since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

Russia’s economy minister warned on Saturday that new sanctions could “seriously” impact growth that the International Monetary Fund believes may only reach 0.2 per cent this year.

But public statements in Moscow indicate it is busy preparing an economic counter-offensive that would put up prohibitive barriers to Ukrainian trade.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that Russia would treat Ukraine and the ex-Soviet states of Georgia of Moldova that signed their own EU deals on Friday “based on one criterium — how [the agreements] might hurt Russian trade”.

Russian and EU ministers have tentatively agreed to meet on July 11 to discuss how Moscow’s concerns might be best addressed.

Ukraine’s commissioner on European integration said he expected the consultations with Russia to be acrimonious and possibly fruitless.

“Our neighbour has this desire to always act as our big brother, a mentor, to always try teaching us something,” Valeriy Pyatnitskiy told Kiev’s Dzerkalo Tyzhnia weekly.

The commissioner added that Ukraine may have no choice but to appeal to the World Trade Organisation — a global free commerce club Russia only joined in 2012 — to step in as a broker of last resort.

“The WTO — there is no question about it,” Pyatnitskiy said.

DONETSK, Ukraine — As his now-former comrades hugged their goodbyes and wished each other a safe journey home, Junior Sergeant Pavel Stupka explained why he refused to renounce his oath of allegiance to Ukraine.

“It would have been a betrayal. I took an oath to the Ukrainian people,” Stupka said, pushing his beret back on his head.

“The government in Kiev may have changed but that doesn’t mean anything as I took my oath to the people.”

For around a year Stupka had been carrying out his obligatory military service at a Ukrainian interior ministry base housing a munitions plant on the outskirts of his hometown Donetsk.

But his service was unexpectedly terminated after heavily-armed pro-Moscow rebel fighters forced the unit to surrender without a fight on Friday evening.

While pro-Kremlin insurgents and government forces have agreed to a shaky ceasefire running until Monday, the rebels are tightening their grip over the remaining Ukrainian-held outposts in the country’s restive east.

In a choreographed event staged for the press on Saturday the separatist authorities gave Stupka and other servicemen a choice: Either swear allegiance to Russia or leave for good.

In a speech railing against the “fascist junta” in Kiev, a senior rebel leader had tried to cajole the troops to sign up with the separatists.

But when the time came, not one of the roughly 100 young conscripts agreed to switch sides — opting instead to head back to their families.

“If I defected to Russia I would have difficulty living with myself,” Stupka said.

 ‘Scared for their families

Nearby, rebels toting automatic weapons lounged on olive green ammunition boxes they had seized the night before. An armoured vehicle from the base was being loaded onto the back of a truck.

“The conscripts were clearly scared for their families but they don’t understand the situation and don’t know what awaits them when they get home,” said Vladimir Markovich, deputy parliament speaker of the rebel’s self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

In his farewell speech to the troops the base commander Colonel Oleg Ponomarenko could only offer kind words and wish them a safe trip home.

“In my 28 years of service I have never lost anyone and what is happening today is a decision to protect the lives and health of those under me,” the bespectacled officer said.

“Personally I just want to thank you for fulfilling your duty,” he added to conscripts’ applause.

Several anxious but relieved parents were waiting for the troops after the ceremony.

“Of course, I am happy that my son is coming back to me safe and well,” said one mother, who gave her name as Yelena. “We were very worried about them.”

But serious questions remained over what lay in store next for the soldiers being dismissed.

“My son finished college and then wanted to join the army to help his career but what can he do now?” said Irina, another parent.

“The rebels say they are letting [the soldiers] go officially but what authority do they have?” she asked.

“What if the government decides later to put [my son] on trial for desertion?”

As they posed for a final group photograph and discussed plans for drinking sprees and finding girls, the conscripts said they too were uncertain about the future.

“I feel a hidden joy,” one conscript told AFP after pulling on his civilian clothes.

“Happiness because we’re being allowed to go but it’s hidden because we don’t know what will happen to us next.”

SARAJEVO — Bosnia marked 100 years since the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that sparked World War I, but the divisive legacy of the gunman Gavrilo Princip meant Serbs were shunning the event.

It was on a Sarajevo street corner on June 28, 1914, that the 19-year-old Bosnian Serb nationalist shot dead the archduke and his wife with a Browning revolver, setting off a chain of events that sucked Europe’s great powers into four years of unprecedented violence that redrew the world map.

Many of those competing powers commemmorated the centenary on the sidelines of an EU summit on Thursday with a low-key ceremony at Belgium’s Ypres, where German forces used mustard gas for the first time in 1915.

But in the Balkans, the legacy of the Great War continues to stir up ethnic divisions between Serbs, Croats and Muslims, preventing heads of state from coming together to mark the event at the site of the assassination in Bosnia’s capital.

“It would have been impossible to bring everyone together on June 28 in Sarajevo,” said Bosnian Serb historian and diplomat Slobodan Soja.

Hero or villain 

There are wildly differing interpretations of 20th century history in the region where the scars of sectarian wars in the 1990s are still fresh.

The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, is among the most divisive figures in that history — either a fervent Serb nationalist who sought to liberate Slavs from the Austro-Hungarian occupier, or a terrorist who unleashed horrific bloodshed on the world, depending on who you ask.

Serbian and Bosnian Serb leaders refused to take part in the main commemorations in Sarajevo on Saturday that were set to feature a performance by the Vienna Philharmonic in the late afternoon — a highly symbolic envoy from the capital of a once-loathed empire.

The Serbs instead unveiled a two-metre-high bronze statue of Princip in eastern Sarajevo on Friday and held their own ceremonies on Saturday in eastern Bosnia.

Top leaders, including Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Bosnian Serb president Milorad Dodik were to join the ceremony in the eastern town of Visegrad, where a street was named after Princip’s revolutionary movement “Young Bosnia”.

“We are here to pay homage to Gavrilo Princip, a key historic figure of last century,” said 58-year old Ljubisa Simonovic, who had travelled from Serbia for the ceremony along with hundreds of others.

“The divisions are regrettable but so are attempts to change the facts, particularly if they are motivated by recent history.”

Until the Bosnia war in the 1990s, Princip was Sarajevo’s favourite son.

Two years after he died in prison in 1920 his bones were dug up and brought to be buried in the city, where a bridge was named after him and plaques put up in his honour.

During the 1990s conflict, he was worshipped as an icon of Serb nationalism by Bosnian Serb forces as they besieged Sarajevo in one of the war’s most brutal episodes.

“For the army bombing Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip was a cult figure,” said Bosnian Muslim historian Husnija Kamberovic.

That ensured Princip was even more loathed by Muslim and Croat civilians trapped in the city, who wasted no time in tearing down his plaques and renaming his bridge after the war ended.

Princip’s brazen attack 100 years ago dragged almost half the world’s population into a cycle of violence of unprecedented scale and intensity.

What became known as the Great War lasted more than 52 months and left some 10 million dead and 20 million injured and maimed on its battlefields. Millions more perished under occupation through disease, hunger or deportation.

Four of the world’s most powerful empires — Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman — collapsed in the aftermath. The ruin of Europe cleared the way for the rise of a new superpower, the United States.

World War I fanned the emergence of many of the ideologies that fashioned the 20th century and its conflicts, including anti-colonialism, Communism, Fascism and Nazism.

KIEV — Ukraine’s new Western-backed president is due on Thursday to submit constitutional changes expanding regional powers in the hope the measure will help calm a bloody pro-Russian insurgency convulsing his ex-Soviet state.

The long-deliberated step comes a day before President Petro Poroshenko signs the final chapters of an historic EU accord in Brussels that opens Ukraine’s way towards eventual membership and pulls it firmly out of Russia’s reach.

The submission of constitutional changes to parliament also comes on the same day that Poroshenko gets German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande to join him for a second round of telephone diplomacy with Russian President Vladimir Putin in two days.

Putin came under intense pressure from both European leaders and US President Barack Obama on Wednesday to rein in separatist fighters over whom he says he has no control.

Obama warned that sweeping economic sanctions were imminent unless the Kremlin stopped “the flow of weapons and militants across the border” and persuades militants to abide by a fragile truce.

Washington added that sanctions would be also discussed by EU leaders on Friday when they sign the full Association Agreement with Ukraine that was ditched by the ousted pro-Russian president in November and now lies at the heart of the raging crisis.

The US kept up the pressure on Thursday, with US Secretary of State John Kerry warning that the Kremlin had to prove within “hours” that it was working to disarm rebels.

But 11 weeks of fighting that have already claimed more than 435 lives and brought factories in the economically vital eastern rustbelt to a virtual standstill continued on Thursday despite the ceasefire agreement.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s “anti-terrorist operation” said 10 paratroopers were wounded in rebel attacks on government roadblocks on Wednesday.

Ukrainian media reports said gunmen had also attacked a small airport on Thursday morning in the flashpoint village of Kramatorsk.

Poroshenko’s one-week unilateral ceasefire order last Friday was picked up by senior separatist leaders on Monday in a seeming breakthrough in a conflict that has left some cities in ruins and displaced tens of thousands.

But the downing by militias of a Ukrainian army helicopter on Tuesday drew a warning from Poroshenko that he may resume the campaign before the ceasefire agreement expires on Friday morning.

Putin has urged Kiev to extend the truce to give more time to peace negotiations that the warring sides began on Monday and were due to continue on Thursday.

Rights to regions

Poroshenko’s Western allies have long urged Kiev to amend Ukraine’s basic law and devolve the central authorities’ extensive controls over regional affairs.

Washington views such a system as more efficient. But it also hopes that it may appease local leaders and Russian-speaking voters enough to suspend their sovereignty drive.

Russia counters that only an outright switch to a federal system in which regions can adopt their own foreign trade policies could work in country as culturally splintered as Ukraine.

The proposals outlined so far by Poroshenko stop well short of meeting the Kremlin’s demands.

His changes would enshrine in the constitution the use of Russian in official business and public schools in independence-minded regions such as Donetsk and Lugansk.

Poroshenko said he was also willing to let local legislatures nominate regional governors instead of having them named directly by the president.

The amendments will be registered in parliament on Thursday but are unlikely to come up for debate until at least next week.

But analysts at the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy said there remained “an unbridgeable gap” between what Russia wanted and what Poroshenko was willing to cede.

“Moscow is seeking a structural guarantee that, via its influence over Ukraine’s south and east, the Ukrainian government will be unable to move a unified Ukraine deeper into European political, economic and, above all, security structures,” the Eurasia Group said in a report.

“Ceding this level of autonomy to regions is impossible for President Poroshenko, who must demonstrate to his own constituents that he is capable of establishing control over a united Ukraine and that, while relations with Russia are critical, capitulation to Kremlin pressure is not acceptable,” it stressed.

WASHINGTON — America’s reliance on secretive drone missile strikes against terror suspects has set a “dangerous precedent” that could be imitated by other countries and trigger wider wars around the world, former senior US officials said in a report Thursday.

The ex-officials acknowledged that the robotic aircraft are a useful tool that is “here to stay”, but urged President Barack Obama to lift the veil of secrecy that surrounds their use, introduce stricter rules for the strikes and take a hard look at whether the bombing raids were genuinely effective.

“The increasing use of lethal UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] may create a slippery slope leading to continual or wider wars,” said the report by a bipartisan panel sponsored by the Stimson Centre think tank.

The employment of drones for attacks outside of traditional battlefields “is likely to be imitated by other states as well”, fueling instability and increasing “the risk of widening conflicts in regions around the globe”, it said.

“US practices set a dangerous precedent that may be seized upon by other states — not all of which are likely to behave as scrupulously as US officials,” it said.

In the eyes of the rest of the world, the United States has essentially claimed the legal right to kill anyone it believes is a member of the Al Qaeda network or its allies “in any state on earth, at any time, based on secret criteria and secret evidence”, the report said.

The pervasive secrecy made it difficult for lawmakers in Congress to serve as a check on executive power and threatened to undermine traditional legal principles that underpin international law, it said.

Obama has promised to curb the secrecy around the strikes and in May said that any operation should not “create more enemies than we take off the battlefield”.

The number of strikes in Pakistan and Yemen have decreased since 2010, according to unofficial tallies based on media reports, but the level of secrecy has changed little.

But the US president has faced criticism that he has failed to live up to his own pledges on drones to “uphold standards that reflect our values”.

Call to acknowledge strikes

The report called on the Obama administration to adopt a more transparent stance and acknowledge drone strikes after they have been carried out in a foreign country. At the moment, US officials barely acknowledge the existence of the drone raids and do not reveal who was targeted, and whether civilians were injured or how many killed.

“While secrecy may be required before and during each strike, strikes should generally be acknowledged by the United States after the fact,” it said.

To ensure more accountability for a campaign largely conducted behind closed doors, the report urged Obama to create “a non-partisan independent commission to review lethal UAV policy”.

The panel also said the Obama administration should fulfill its plan to transfer most of the drone strikes from the Central Intelligence Agency to the military, which operates under more transparent legal parameters compared to the spy service.

The authors questioned the overall efficacy of the drone strikes, saying it was not clear that the government had ever conducted a thorough analysis of the strategic advantages and disadvantages of using the robotic aircraft for counter-terrorism efforts.

It was time for the administration to conduct a “rigorous strategic review and cost-benefit analysis” of the drone raids, looking at the effect of past strikes on terror groups, local communities, public opinion, and the cooperation of allies and partners, it said.

The ten-member task force that examined the controversial drone attacks included former senior intelligence and legal officials, and was led by retired four-star general John Abizaid, who served as head of US Central Command and Rosa Brooks, a former legal adviser at the Pentagon who is now a law professor at Georgetown University.

Human rights groups have long denounced the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere as an unaccountable air war that operates virtually without scrutiny from Congress or the courts.

But the Stimson report was unusual as several of the authors were former high-ranking officials working in intelligence and counter-terrorism, including former legal advisers at the CIA, the State Department and the White House’s National Security Council.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Gunmen opened fire on a passenger jet while it was landing in Pakistan’s troubled northwest, killing a woman passenger and wounding two crew as the military battles Taliban insurgents in the region.

The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight, landing in Peshawar from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, came under fire late Tuesday as it descended with more than 170 passengers on board.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but attention turned to the Pakistani Taliban, who have promised a bloody response to the army’s assault on their strongholds in North Waziristan.

Authorities said the Airbus A310 landed safely but a catastrophe was only narrowly avoided when it was hit by eight bullets from the unidentified attackers.

PIA spokesman Mashud Tajwar said the plane was between 60 to 100 metres off the ground when it was hit, contradicting an earlier altitude of 1,500 metres given by police.

“The shots were fired from outside the airport, one lady passenger and two stewards were wounded, the woman later died in the hospital,” Tajwar told AFP.

Tajwar said the reason for the firing was not yet clear but the airline had not received any threats.

Muhammad Faisal, a senior police official in Peshawar, said eight AK-47 bullets hit the plane’s tail section.

Pilot praised 

Police cordoned off an area outside the airport to search for the gunmen and paid tribute to the pilot’s coolness.

“Credit goes to the aeroplane pilot that he managed to land safely,” said senior police official Najeeb Ur Rehman.

The airport was briefly closed after the incident and the Emirates airline cancelled its Wednesday flight from Dubai to Peshawar.

The attack came two weeks after a bloody raid on the international airport in the southern port city of Karachi that doomed a largely fruitless peace process with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Hours before the latest incident, militants staged the first suicide bombing in North Waziristan since the military launched its major operation against the Taliban. Three people were killed in the attack.

The military said it had killed 47 fighters in the tribal northwest in its most recent air strikes — part of the assault which began on June 15.

The armed forces have used jet fighters, tanks and artillery to kill more than 300 people they have described as militants, although the number and identity of the victims are impossible to verify.

The suicide attacker struck in North Waziristan’s village of Spinwam, detonating a car bomb when he was intercepted on the approach to a checkpoint. Officials said two soldiers and a civilian were killed.

The deaths bring to 12 the number of security forces killed in the offensive, dubbed “Zarb-e-Azb” after a sword used in battle by Prophet Mohammad.

The Ansar-ul-Mujahedin militant group, a Pakistani Taliban faction, claimed responsibility for the car bomb, with spokesman Abu Baseer calling it the start of a counter-strike against the military.

“It is the beginning of our offensive, and we will launch attacks against government and local tribesmen if they form an anti-Taliban force,” Baseer told AFP via telephone from an unknown location.

Also Tuesday Pakistani jets and helicopters targeted militant hideouts at several locations in North Waziristan and the neighbouring Khyber tribal region, killing 47 militants, a military statement said.

The offensive has claimed the lives of a total of 346 militants so far, according to an AFP tally.

After some 10 days of shelling and air raids in North Waziristan, a total of more than 470,000 people have fled the region — fearful of an expected ground assault.

Many have headed to the nearby town of Bannu, where police and troops fired warning shots on Tuesday to quell a protest over food shortages.

The UN said Tuesday that up to half a million people could be displaced by the current military operation and urged the Pakistani government to allow its agencies access to the affected areas.

The assault on the militant bastion of North Waziristan, long urged by Washington, was finally launched after the dramatic attack on Karachi airport which killed dozens of people and marked the end of the ailing peace process.

SLAVYANSK, Ukraine — Ukraine’s new Western-backed leader sought urgent talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday after separatist rebels shot down an army helicopter despite orders from their own commander to observe a fragile truce.

The death of nine servicemen outside the pro-Russian stronghold city of Slavyansk and loss of two other soldiers in militia attacks prompted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to threaten to unleash a powerful new military campaign in the industrial east.

An AFP team in Slavyansk heard a wave of shelling being launched by Ukrainian forces who have effectively surrounded the devastated city of nearly 120,000 on Wednesday morning.

Their push was met with extended rounds of anti-aircraft and heavy machinegun fire that echoed through deserted city streets.

“This is the calm before the storm that begins once the ceasefire ends,” said a 42-year-old rebel who is simply known to his unit as “Oleksandr the Soldier”.

Poroshenko’s warning dealt a crushing blow to hopes of the sides mediating an end to 11 weeks of fighting that has killed more than 435 people and brought the ex-Soviet nation to the brink of collapse.

Kiev’s temporary ceasefire was picked up by separatist commanders on Monday but was due to expire on Friday morning after just one round of inconclusive and indirect talks.

Putin urged both sides to extend the truce and further asked senators to revoke his March 1 authorisation to invade his western neighbour in a self-proclaimed bid to “protect” ethnic Russians from the nationalists now in power in Kiev.

Russia’s rubber-stamp upper chamber approved Putin’s request on Wednesday in a 153-1 vote.

But Kiev and Washington still accuse Putin of covertly arming the rebels in retaliation for the February ouster of a pro-Russian administration that abruptly ditched an historic EU agreement, and preferred closer ties with Moscow instead.

Poroshenko will sign the final chapters of that pact in Brussels on Friday despite the strong likelihood that Russia will follow up a cut in gas deliveries it imposed on June 16 with punishing new trade restrictions.

The Ukrainian leader now hopes that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande will join him on a conference call to Putin that could decide the immediate faith of diplomatic efforts to resolve Ukraine’s worst crisis since its independence in 1991.

NATO warns Russia 

The crumbling hopes for a quick solution will also confront NATO foreign ministers when they huddle in Brussels amid pleas from ex-Soviet satellite nations for the alliance to beef up its military presence along Russia’s western frontier.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen noted entering the meeting that the alliance intended to “review our relations with Russia and decide what to do next”.

“I regret to say that we see no signs that Russia is respecting its international commitments,” NATO’s top civilian official said.

The meeting will also see US Secretary of State John Kerry conduct his first bilateral talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin — a veteran diplomat who had represented Poroshenko in closed door negotiations with Russia that resulted in Kiev’s decision to call a temporary truce.

The current negotiations are being led by an unusual assortment of figures who include former Ukrainian leader Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Medvedchuk — the one-time chief of staff of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych who is currently on a US sanctions list.

He unofficially represents the separatist cause but is seen to be so close to Putin that his daughter is rumoured to have the Russian strongman as a godfather.

Some analysts believe Putin trusts Medvedchuk enough to believe he will lead negotiations that result in the Kremlin preserving its influence over eastern Ukraine.

But the Kremlin chief would also like to be seen as a proponent of dialogue to avoid painful economic sanctions that both Washington and the European Union have threatened to unleash unless Putin took immediate steps to promote peace.

The White House said it was encouraged both by Putin’s latest steps and the rebels’ acceptance of Poroshenko’s temporary ceasefire.

But the Mi-8 helicopter’s downing on Tuesday underscores the limited control both Russia and senior rebel leaders have over some militia units that are apparently operating according to their own rules on the battlefield.

“Clearly, not surprisingly, the separatists all are not on the same page,” US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday asked lawmakers to revoke a resolution allowing him to invade Ukraine in a shock turnabout that Kiev hailed as his “first practical step” towards helping defuse the crisis.

The surprise reversal from the Kremlin strongman comes amid the threat of tougher Western sanctions against Moscow and could help spur fragile peace initiatives to end fighting in eastern Ukraine after pro-Russian rebels agreed Monday to a temporary government ceasefire.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the decision to reverse the March 1 vote giving Putin carte blanche to send troops into Ukraine was aimed at “normalising the atmosphere and resolving the situation” where over 370 people have been killed since April.

In a rare sign of agreement Ukraine’s Western-backed President Petro Poroshenko welcomed the announcement as “the first practical step taken by the Russian president in the wake of his decision to officially support Ukraine’s settlement plan for the [eastern] Donbass region”.

Senators in Russia’s rubber-stamp legislative body will vote Wednesday to rescind the decision which saw troops massed along the border in what was seen as a threat of intervention.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told journalists after meeting Poroshenko in Kiev that “appropriate signals” were needed from all sides and that both rebels and the Ukrainian army had to stick to the ceasefire.

On the ground in eastern Ukraine fighting still bubbled away — albeit at a lower intensity — with Poroshenko saying that one serviceman was killed as insurgent attacks continued overnight.

That came despite a prominent rebel leader on Monday reversing his firm rejection of Kiev’s peace overtures by agreeing to a ceasefire and suggesting talks with the authorities.

“We hope that during the period in which both sides halt fire, we will be able to agree and begin consultations about holding negotiations about a peaceful settlement to the conflict,” Alexander Borodai, prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic said in a broadcast by Russian television.

New sanctions threat 

Poroshenko has been lobbying world leaders to follow through with their threat to unleash devastating economic sanctions against Russia should Putin fail to immediately end his perceived military and diplomatic backing of the insurgents.

Putin’s volte-face came shortly ahead of a visit to Vienna Tuesday where he was expected to face renewed pressure from his counterpart Heinz Fischer and Switzerland’s Didier Burkhalter — the current head of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

While in the Austrian capital Putin oversaw a deal between state energy giant Gazprom and Austria’s OMV approving a section of a Kremlin-backed pipeline project to Europe that has become the focus of new pressure as tensions have grown over Ukraine.

Putin’s reversal follows a conversation with US President Barack Obama Monday evening, the first since the beginning of the month, in which Obama threatened Putin with new sanctions if Moscow failed to stop the flow of weapons to Ukraine.

Ukraine’s president will sign a historic EU trade pact on Friday that crowns his May 25 election promise to make the decisive move westward — one strongly resisted by Russia and that lies at the heart of the current unrest.

Poroshenko’s office said he told US Vice President Joe Biden on Monday night that the rebels’ ceasefire “must be accompanied by the release of hostages and a sealing of the border to halt the entry into Ukraine from Russia of mercenaries, weapons and drugs.”

“Poroshenko stressed that now, Russia must demonstrate real steps forward,” his office said in a statement.

The European Union warned after a meeting of foreign ministers Monday that it expected to see action from Putin “within days”.

Some analysts believe that Putin is still smarting from the sudden loss of an ally in Kiev — ousted by pro-EU protesters in February — who could have brought Ukraine into a new alliance of post-Soviet nations being assembled by the Kremlin.

The subsequent flow of heavy weapons and gunmen across the porous border into eastern Ukraine seem to indicate that the Kremlin is — at the very least — turning a blind eye to local Russian officials and military commanders’ efforts to support the insurgents.

But the Kremlin chief seems equally determined to avoid steps that could trigger broader sanctions and deal a further blow to a Russian economy that is already teetering on the edge of a recession.

KABUL — A top Afghan election official accused of fraud resigned Monday, raising hopes of ending a political deadlock that threatens to derail the country’s presidential succession as NATO troops withdraw.

Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhail, head of the secretariat of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), denied all charges against him but said he was stepping down to save the election process.

Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah has boycotted the counting of votes from the run-off election a week ago, accusing the IEC of being biased against him in the contest against his rival Ashraf Ghani.

“Now the door is open for us to talk to the [election] commission and talk about the conditions and circumstances that will help the process,” Abdullah told reporters after Amarkhail resigned.

The United Nations reacted positively, describing Amarkhail’s resignation as “a step that helps protect Afghanistan’s historic political transition”.

Abdullah had called for Amarkhail’s removal since the June 14 vote, which was at first hailed by the US and other international allies as a successful part of the country’s first democratic transfer of power.

A smooth election is seen as a benchmark of success for the US-led coalition that has fought against the Taliban and donated billions of dollars in aid to Afghanistan since 2001.

Abdullah’s campaign team on Sunday released telephone recordings that it said were conversations of Amarkhail arranging ballot-box stuffing using the code words “sheep stuffing”.

“I have resigned only to protect the election process, and so that Dr Abdullah Abdullah can put an end to his boycott and resume his relationship with the IEC,” Amarkhail said at a press conference.

“The audio recordings regarding fraud were fake,” he added.

UN warns of dangers 

Reports of the ongoing vote count suggest that Ghani has made a surprise comeback after finishing behind Abdullah in the first-round election on April 5.

The preliminary result is due on July 2 and the final result, after adjudication of complaints, is scheduled for July 22.

International diplomats expressed alarm over the prospect of a disputed outcome and the risk of civil unrest as military assistance and civilian aid declines.

The threat of ethnic friction erupting is a constant concern for Afghanistan, where tribal loyalties are still fierce after the 1992-1996 civil war.

Abdullah’s support is based among the Tajik minority and other northern tribes, while Ghani is a Pashtun — Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, which is strongest in the Taliban heartlands of the south and east.

Ghani’s campaign said it also welcomed Amarkhail’s resignation for “the sake of stability”, and denied he was working to commit fraud on Ghani’s behalf.

Outgoing President Hamid Karzai has vowed to deliver a successful election as his “legacy”, though it is unclear if he has played a role in behind-the-scenes efforts to end the deadlock, and he has not named his preferred successor.

Abdullah’s allegations that in several provinces there were more votes than eligible voters have yet to be resolved, and neither candidate looks likely to concede defeat.