World

PARIS — World leaders meet in Normandy on Friday for the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, but with Europe in its worst security crisis since the Cold War, the event will be a backdrop to urgent diplomacy over Ukraine.

Some 18 national leaders will attend ceremonies along with 3,000 veterans along France’s northern coast where Allied forces landed on June 6, 1944 in a sea-borne invasion that sped up the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Barack Obama and — thanks to a last-minute invitation from France — Ukraine’s president-elect Petro Poroshenko will be among the leaders gathering for a closed-door lunch on Friday.

“Yes, this is a day about the veterans and remembering those that died for basic freedoms, but it’s also an opportunity to look ahead and de-escalate the Ukraine crisis,” said one French diplomat, who declined to be identified.

Putin is due to meet France’s President Francois Hollande, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s David Cameron on the sidelines of the events — his first encounter with Western leaders since Moscow’s annexation of the Crimea in March.

No separate meeting between Putin and Obama is planned as yet but French organisers say the luxurious 18th century Chateau de Benouville, where lunch will be prepared by four Michelin star chefs, will have rooms ready for bilateral sessions.

Speaking to French radio station Europe 1 on Wednesday, Putin offered to meet Obama in France.

“There is no reason to think President Obama does not want to talk to the Russian president,” he said. “It’s his choice. I am ready for dialogue.”

Hollande is due to meet with Obama at a restaurant in central Paris and then host Putin at the presidential palace for a late supper on Thursday, the eve of D-Day.

“I’m meeting President Obama and President Putin. It’s late in the day, but the objective is that it is useful. What’s at stake is Ukraine, it’s stability and it’s security,” Hollande told reporters in Poland on Wednesday, adding he would also try to enable dialogue between Putin and Ukraine’s Poroshenko.

G-7 sideline meetings

Having been excluded from the Group of Eight major powers for its seizure of Crimea and its part in the destabilisation of eastern Ukraine, Russia was not included in the Group of Seven summit in Brussels this week.

Relations between Russia and the Ukraine as well as with Europe and the United States are in tatters after protesters pushed a Moscow-friendly Ukrainian president from power in February, and Russia then annexed Crimea.

Russia has deployed tens of thousands of troops near the Ukrainian border and warned it could send them in to protect Russian-speakers in the east, while Poroshenko and Ukraine’s pro-Western government have ignored Moscow’s demands for an end to Kiev’s military operation against pro-Russian separatists.

One Russian diplomat said D-Day could be an opportunity to replicate a constructive meeting between Putin and Obama at the Saint Petersburg G-20 meeting last year, where the two men came to an agreement over destroying Syria’s chemical arsenal.

Aside from the diplomatic activity, Putin, whose country lost more than 20 million people during World War II, will join leaders including Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski for a display marking D-Day on Sword Beach.

Obama will give a speech in the morning at the US cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach where about 2,500 US troops died.

With the youngest survivors of the landings now in their late 80s, the events carry extra significance.

MADRID — Spain set its future King Felipe VI on the path to the throne Tuesday, launching an unprecedented handover of the crown in the face of anti-royalist protests.

One day after 76-year-old King Juan Carlos declared an end to a four-decade reign that guided Spain from dictatorship to democracy, the government met to ponder the first succession in post-Franco history.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy presided over an extraordinary Cabinet meeting to draw up a draft abdication law, which must then be approved by parliament in a process that could take weeks.

The twilight of the Bourbon king’s reign has been dogged by scandal and health woes including repeated hip surgery.

Dressed in a green military uniform at a prescheduled medal-awarding ceremony in the sun-splashed grounds of the El Escorial palace near Madrid on Tuesday, the king could be seen walking with an awkward shuffle.

During the televised ceremony the monarch nevertheless looked relaxed as he spoke occasionally to his son, 46-year-old Crown Prince Felipe, as the pair appeared together for the first time since the abdication was announced.

Not all Spaniards celebrated the impending arrival of Felipe, a tall former Olympic yachtsman more popular than his father, and his 41-year-old wife, the future queen Letizia, a glamorous former television news presenter.

Thousands of anti-royalists took to the streets across Spain in the hours after Juan Carlos’ announcement, calling for a vote on the monarchy’s survival.

Protesters filled Madrid’s central Puerta del Sol square and police closed access to the royal palace just a few minutes’ walk from the demonstration for several hours.

“Tomorrow, Spain will be a republic!” chanted crowds of demonstrators, brandishing placards reading: “No more kings, a referendum,” “A royal transition... without a king,” and “Bourbons up for election”.

“I think now would be a good time to proclaim a republic,” said Paola Torija, a 24-year-old therapist for the disabled. “He had his moment of glory but today it is a bit archaic, a bit useless, an extra cost especially in the crisis we are living in.”

Three small leftist parties — Podemos, United Left and the Equo green Party which together won 20 per cent of the vote in May 25 European Parliament elections — called for a referendum on the monarchy.

Spain’s prime minister defended the monarchy and said a referendum would require a change to the constitution.

“I think the monarchy has the support of the great majority in Spain,” Rajoy said at a conference Tuesday in Madrid.

“Propose a constitutional reform if you don’t like this constitution. You have the perfect right to do so. But what you cannot do in a democracy is bypass the law,” he said.

Spain’s 1978 constitution, which established a parliamentary democracy and a largely ceremonial monarchy, was supported by a great majority of Spaniards in a referendum at the time, the prime minister said.

Juan Carlos was widely respected for smoothing Spain’s transition to democracy after the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975, most famously facing down an attempted military coup in February 1981.

But many Spaniards were outraged when they discovered the king took a luxury elephant-hunting trip to Botswana in 2012 as they struggled to find jobs in a recession.

Resentment grew when the king’s younger daughter Cristina was named a suspect in relation to her husband Inaki Urdangarin’s allegedly corrupt business practices.

In a televised address to the nation on Monday, Juan Carlos said the economic crisis had awakened a “desire for renewal”.

MADRID — Spain’s King Juan Carlos said on Monday he would abdicate in favour of his son Prince Felipe, aiming to revive the scandal-hit monarchy at a time of economic hardship and growing discontent with the wider political elite.

“A new generation is quite rightly demanding to take the lead role,” Juan Carlos, 76, said on television, hours after a surprise announcement from Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy that the monarch would step down after almost 40 years on the throne.

The once popular Carlos, who helped smooth Spain’s transition to democracy in the 1970s after the Francisco Franco dictatorship, seemed increasingly out of touch in recent years.

He took a secret luxury elephant-hunting trip to Botswana in 2012, a time when one in four Spanish workers was jobless and the government teetered on the brink of default.

A corruption scandal in the family and his visible infirmity after repeated surgery in recent years have also eroded public support. Polls show greater support for the low-key Felipe, 46, who has not been tarnished by the corruption allegations.

The king’s younger daughter, Princess Cristina, and her husband, Inaki Urdangarin, are under investigation and a judge is expected to decide soon whether to put Urdangarin on trial on charges of embezzling 6 million euros in public funds through his charity. He and Cristina deny wrongdoing.

The king, who walks with a cane after multiple hip operations and struggled to speak clearly during an important speech earlier this year, is stepping down for personal reasons, Rajoy said.

But a source at the royal palace told Reuters the abdication was for political reasons. The source said the king decided in January to step down, but delayed the announcement until after the European Union election on May 25.

Political analysts said the ruling conservative People’s Party (PP) was eager to put the more popular Felipe on the throne to try to combat increasingly anti-monarchist sentiment, after small leftist and anti-establishment parties did surprisingly well in the election.

The country is just pulling out of a long recession that dented faith in politicians, the royal family and other institutions. The PP and the Socialists, which have dominated politics since the return to democracy, are committed to the monarchy, but they polled less than 50 per cent between them in the recent election.

Smaller leftist parties Podemos, United Left and Equo Green Party, which together took 20 per cent in the European vote, all called on Monday for a referendum on the monarchy.

“People are calling for political regeneration, a change in the institutional functioning of the state after around 40 years of democracy, and they’ve started with the royals,” said Jordi Rodriguez Virgili, professor of political communication at Navarra University.

Spain does not have a precise law regulating abdication and succession. Rajoy’s Cabinet was scheduled to have an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday to set out the steps for Prince Felipe to take over as Felipe VI. The transition will likely be accomplished by passing a law through parliament, where the PP has an absolute majority.

“We’ve been hearing continuously over the last few months on the necessity for deep change. The feeling is that the European elections have been a turning point and I believe the decision has been made in this context,” said Rafael Rubio, constitutional expert at Madrid’s Complutense University.

A prince for new times

There has been media speculation over an abdication since last year.

Sixty-two per cent of Spaniards were in favour of the king stepping down, according to a January poll by Sigma Dos. That compared with 45 per cent a year earlier. Only 41 per cent of those polled had a good or very good opinion of the king.

Felipe has a positive rating of 66 per cent and most Spaniards believe the monarchy could recover its prestige if he took the throne, according to the poll.

“Felipe has a lot more energy to do the job,” said Alfonso Romero, 36, a student.

Political analysts speculated Felipe may try to seek dialogue between Rajoy and Catalan President Artur Mas, who is leading a movement to break away from Spain. But Mas said on Monday that Felipe’s taking the throne would not dissuade him from trying to hold a referendum on independence in November.

The prince, who has had a growing role in ceremonial events in the past year, is seen as more practical and in tune with current affairs than Carlos, a jovial skier and sailor once beloved for his common touch and seen as much more accessible than the older generations of British royals.

Carlos will be the second European monarch to abdicate in just over a year. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands stepped down in April 2013 to make way for her son Willem-Alexander.

Felipe married divorced journalist Leticia Ortiz in 2004 and they have two daughters. The royal family began a Twitter feed (@CasaReal) on their 10th wedding anniversary, May 21, with tweets on both Carlos and Felipe’s weekend visit to El Salvador for the swearing in of President Salvador Sanchez Ceren.

The prince was in Spain on Monday but had no official events planned until Tuesday when he is scheduled to appear with the king at the El Escorial monastery and former royal palace.

As king, Felipe will be Spain’s head of state, representing the country at summits, official visits and in meetings with business leaders.

Even if he can win Spaniards over, he will continue to face a sense that the country does not need a king.

“I’m not a monarchist and don’t have a high opinion of them,” said Maria Luisa Villaseca, a retired public employee visiting the medieval city of Toledo. “I think they should call a referendum and ask citizens what they want.”

DONETSK, Ukraine/MOSCOW — Russia gave Ukraine a breathing space on Monday in a multi-billion-dollar gas dispute but balanced the concession with fierce denunciations of Kiev and NATO, while fighting raged all day in eastern Ukraine.

Russia accused NATO of whipping up dangerous tensions near its borders and encouraging Ukraine to use force against pro-Russian separatists. At a tense meeting in Brussels, the alliance urged Moscow to stop arming the rebels.

In the eastern city of Luhansk, Ukrainian border guards said a pro-Russian militia had attacked one of their posts with automatic weapons and grenade launchers in the early hours, triggering a prolonged battle about which both sides gave conflicting information.

Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Moscow of fuelling the pro-Russian uprising that threatens to break up the former Soviet republic of 45 million people. Russia denies orchestrating the unrest, and says Ukraine’s attempts to end it by military force are making the situation worse.

In a conciliatory signal, Russia’s Gazprom gave Ukraine until June 9 to resolve the two countries’ long-running row over gas pricing, postponing a threat to cut off supplies as early as Tuesday.

But two top Russian officials turned up the volume of Cold War-style rhetoric in the worst East-West crisis since the fall of Communism a quarter of a century ago.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would submit a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council later on Monday, calling for an immediate end to the violence in eastern Ukraine and the creation of humanitarian corridors to help civilians escape the fighting.

In pointed comments aimed at newly elected Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Lavrov said that Western nations had assured Russia the situation in Ukraine would improve after the May 25 election that brought him to power. Instead of that, he said, “everything is happening in exactly the opposite way”.

“People are dying every day. Peaceful civilians are suffering more and more — the army, military aviation and heavy weapons continue to be used against them,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.

‘Unprecedented activity’

In Brussels, Russia’s envoy to NATO accused the Western alliance of exacerbating the crisis.

“We have noticed unprecedented NATO activity near Russia’s borders. It is excessive, inappropriate and weakens stability, security and predictability in the Euro-Atlantic region,” state-run RIA news agency quoted Alexander Grushko as saying.

A NATO spokeswoman said alliance members called on Russia “to stop the flow of arms and weapons across the border, to stop supporting armed separatists in Ukraine, and to withdraw in a full and verifiable manner their troops from the Ukrainian border”.

Russia denies arming the rebels or orchestrating the unrest, although increasing numbers of Russian fighters have been seen on the separatist side.

President-elect Poroshenko and Ukraine’s pro-Western government have defied Moscow’s repeated calls for an end to what Kiev calls its “anti-terrorist” operation against armed separatists in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, who want to follow the example of Crimea by splitting from Ukraine and joining Russia.

New deadline

Poroshenko is due to be inaugurated on Saturday and will immediately face an array of crises, including the new deadline in the gas dispute.

Since the overthrow of pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich in February, Russia has demanded a sharp increase in the price Ukraine pays for gas. Kiev says it cannot afford it and wants the discounted price it negotiated in the past.

While the dispute has dragged on, Gazprom has continued billing Kiev at the higher rate. It says Ukraine already owes it more than $5 billion in unpaid bills and is running up more debt at a rate of more than $1 billion per month.

But after Kiev paid off $786 million of its gas debt, Gazprom announced a six-day extension of the deadline until June 9. Gazprom also said that it would not sue Ukraine’s gas supplier Naftogaz over unpaid bills during the coming week.

The dispute has wider energy implications for Europe, which gets a third of its gas needs from Russia and almost half of these supplies via Ukraine.

Rising violence

Despite a pullback of some of the tens of thousands of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine, violence increased in the east of the country at the start of last week, with dozens of pro-Moscow rebel fighters killed in a government assault. Many were Russians, whose bodies were sent back across the border.

In Monday’s fighting, Ukrainian security sources said a force of separatists had occupied the upper floors of an apartment block and were shooting into the border post on the southern edge of Luhansk, a city very close to the frontier with Russia.

A separatist fighter, Alexander Gureyev, said by telephone that a Ukrainian fighter plane had shot at the regional administration building. “There are dead and injured in the city,” he said.

Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted a senior local health official as saying that an explosion in the building had killed two people. Ukrainian authorities denied they had conducted an air strike.

Earlier, a border guard spokesman, Oleh Slobodin, said: “We have eight or nine wounded. The attackers have five dead and eight wounded.”

In Geneva, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs declined to comment on Russia’s proposal to create humanitarian corridors for civilians to get out of harm’s way.

“Generally, when we talk about corridors, it always needs to be clear, first of all from where to where? And particularly, who is going to secure that corridor?” spokesman Jens Laerke said.

“Because once you say here’s a corridor, once people start moving on that, if there’s no one to protect them, then it’s very dangerous.”

MADRID  –– Spain's King Juan Carlos plans to abdicate and pave the way for his son, Crown Prince Felipe, to take over, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told the country Monday in an announcement broadcast nationwide.

He did not say when Juan Carlos would abdicate because the government must now craft a law creating a legal mechanism for the abdication and for 46-year-old Felipe's assumption of power.

The 76-year-old Juan Carlos oversaw his country's transition from dictatorship to democracy but has had repeated health problems in recent years.

His popularity also dipped following royal scandals, including an elephant-shooting trip he took in the middle of Spain's financial crisis during which he broke his right hip and had to be flown from Botswana back to Spain for medical treatment aboard a private jet.

The king came to power in 1975, two days after the death of longtime dictator Francisco Franco. He endeared himself to many Spaniards in large part by putting down an attempted military coup in 1981 when he was a young and largely untested head of state.

As Spain's new democracy matured over the years, the king played a largely figurehead role, traveling the globe as an ambassador for the country, and was a stabilising force in a country with restive, independence-minded regions such as the Basque region and Catalonia.

KABUL — US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel on Sunday said a prisoner swap that freed soldier Bowe Bergdahl could create an “opening” for direct talks with the Taliban as the leader of the insurgents hailed the exchange as a “big victory”.

Bergdahl, the only US soldier captured by the Taliban since the war began in 2001, was freed in exchange for five senior insurgent detainees as both parties claimed success for the dramatic deal, brokered by Qatar.

But the swap was criticised by several Republican lawmakers who demanded to know whether the Taliban prisoners would return to fighting the United States.

In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Hagel staunchly defended the trade as an effort to save Bergdahl’s life and said it could provide a breakthrough for peace in Afghanistan.

“So maybe this will be a new opening that can produce an agreement,” he said, noting that the United States had engaged in talks with the Taliban in the past.

Mullah Mohammad Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, also issued a rare statement praising the “big victory” for the Afghan Muslim nation in a sign seen by a government negotiator and some analysts as potential confidence building measure.

Earlier Sunday, Hagel paid a brief unannounced visit to Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, where he met privately with more than a dozen of the team that carried out the exchange mission, according to The Washington Post.

“We believed that the information that we had, the intelligence that we had, was such that Sgt. Bergdahl’s safety and health were both in jeopardy, and in particular, his health was deteriorating,” he told US media.

“It was our judgment that if we could find an opening and move very quickly... that we could get him out of there, essentially to save his life,” he added.

Bergdahl’s release came four days after President Barack Obama announced a timetable for a final US pullout by end-2016.

The five Guantanamo prisoners were named as Mohammad Fazl, Norullah Noori, Mohammed Nabi, Khairullah Khairkhwa and Abdul Haq Wasiq, all influential former officials of the Taliban regime toppled by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.

They were swapped for Idaho native Bergdahl, who disappeared from a base in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province.

A senior US administration official confirmed that the United States had transferred the five Afghan Guantanamo detainees to Qatar, as did a Taliban statement which added the men were with their families.

A separate source said the Taliban detainees would spend the year in Qatar.

‘This will help peace’ 

“I think it shows all sides’ goodwill for trust-building and start of the peace talks in near future,” Ismail Qasimyar, of Afghanistan’s high peace council, said of the deal.

Borhan Osman, a researcher and analyst said the deal, while not directly connected to the peace process, could increase both sides’ confidence in each other.

“It does bolster the Taliban’s political office’s status as sort of reliable address for the movement,” he said, referring to the group’s “embassy” in Qatar.

“The trade of prisoners in a smooth manner would naturally serve as a ‘nice’ measure, that could be followed by more measures towards peace talks if they want to,” he added.

The men’s release had long been the main condition imposed by the Taliban to launch peace negotiations with the United States.

President Barack Obama appeared with Bergdahl’s parents at the White House to announce his release.

“Today the American people are pleased that we will be able to welcome home Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, held captive for nearly five years,” he said.

Qatar-brokered deal 

Obama also expressed his “deepest appreciation” to the Emir of Qatar for his help in securing the return.

Bergdahl was in good condition after the Taliban handed him over to “a few dozen” US special forces backed up by helicopters at an undisclosed location in eastern Afghanistan, defence officials said.

According to officials quoted in US media he appeared to have difficulty speaking English after five-years with Pashto speaking Afghans.

Pentagon officials said he was brought to Bagram for medical treatment, and was then flown to the US military medical facility at Landstuhl in Germany for further treatment and evaluation.

He will later be flown back home to be reunited with his family.

Since his capture, Bergdahl has appeared in several Taliban videos.

In January the United States obtained a “proof of life” video of the soldier — the first concrete evidence in more than three years that he was still alive.

In his statement, Obama said “Sergeant Bergdahl’s recovery is a reminder of America’s unwavering commitment to leave no man or woman in uniform behind on the battlefield”.

Several of his Republican opponents took a harsher view of the deal.

Influential Senator John McCain demanded to know what steps were being taken to “ensure that these vicious and violent Taliban extremists never return to fight against the United States and our partners”.

McCain described the men being released as “hardened terrorists who have the blood of Americans and countless Afghans on their hands”.

KIEV — Ukraine’s new pro-Western leader enters a defining week Sunday seeking to head off a Russian gas cut and secure US President Barack Obama’s backing with his country threatened by civil war.

Confectionery tycoon Petro Poroshenko will also attempt to arrange the first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin since the February ouster of a pro-Kremlin regime in Kiev sparked the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.

And it ends Saturday with the 48-year-old sworn in as the fifth president of Ukraine after a convincing first-round May 25 election win handed him a mandate to resolve a separatist insurgency threatening the very survival of the ex-Soviet state.

“These meetings will be crucial,” said Kiev-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko.

“They will help establish direct relations and introduce Petro Poroshenko to world leaders — first and foremost, Barack Obama.”

Russian gas threat

Ukraine’s third “gas war” with Russia in less than a decade erupted when Moscow — stunned by the sudden ouster of an ally who had just rejected an EU alliance that the Kremlin greatly feared — nearly doubled the price it charges its neighbour for the fuel.

Kiev accused Moscow of “economic aggression” and refused to cover a bill that Russia puts at $5.17 billion (3.79 billion euros).

Russian gas transits through Ukraine supply about 15 per cent of European needs and a top EU envoy is now urgently seeking a compromise that could save 18 member states from seeing supply cuts go into effect Wednesday.

A final round of talks has been set for Monday in Brussels after Ukraine’s Naftogaz state energy firm — bowing to both EU and Kremlin pressure — transferred a $786 million payment to its Russian counterpart Gazprom to keep the talks alive.

Gazprom now says it is willing to discuss a lower price and analysts believe that a compromise is in sight.

“Our view is that Gazprom and Naftogaz will eventually reach a compromise,” Moscow’s VTB Capital investment bank said in a research note.

“However, it is unclear how long the discussions between the parties will continue and what the possible consequences will be.”

Obama handshake 

Poroshenko will shake hands with Obama on Wednesday in Warsaw wary of an address last week in which the White House chief put American diplomacy above military might in confronting threats such as that of Russia’s expansion.

“Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” Obama told US Military Academy graduates.

That message was greeted with awkward silence by former Soviet satellites in eastern Europe that have been clamouring for firmer US protection since Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March.

Washington is sending Assistant Secretary of Defence Derek Chollet for meetings in Kiev on Monday aimed at reassuring Poroshenko and showing Putin the strength of the US commitment to Ukraine.

“I am certain that as soon as president-elect Poroshenko is sworn into office, we will begin discussions about our future cooperation on security and defence,” US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt told Kiev’s Dzerkalo Tyzhnia newspaper.

Poroshenko for his part promised to seek a “new security alliance with the United States and Europe” that could protect Ukraine without its outright membership in the Cold War-era NATO bloc that Russia views with hostility and mistrust.

Elusive Putin meeting 

Putin spelt out the threat of an outright invasion of Ukraine when he sought and won parliament’s authorisation on March 1 to use any means necessary to “protect” ethnic Russian living across the border.

But the threat of war began receding last month when Putin surprised many by suddenly softening his tone.

The Kremlin chief advised Ukraine’s eastern Lugansk and Donetsk regions against holding May 11 independence referendums that went ahead anyway but which he then refused to recognise as binding.

Putin also promised to “respect” the outcome of Ukraine’s own election and began pulling back the 40,000 troops he had massed at Ukraine’s doorstep in an ominous show of strength that touched off near-panic in Kiev.

Western diplomats remain sceptical about the sincerity of Putin’s shift. But they agree that it provides a welcome opening for Poroshenko.

The Ukrainian political veteran now hopes to tap the ties he nurtured in Moscow while serving as foreign minister under now-deposed president Viktor Yanukovych to set up a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of Friday’s D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

Resolving Ukraine’s two-month separatist insurgency “is impossible without engaging the Russian leadership”, Poroshenko said a day after his election.

But the Kremlin is yet to confirm the meeting and analysts expect no breakthrough even if such talks are held.

“This would be something like a political reconnaissance mission for Poroshenko,” said analyst Fesenko.

“It is important to understand Putin’s mood and to know what kind of concessions he might make.”

SINGAPORE — The United States and China squared off at an Asian security forum on Saturday, with the US defence secretary accusing Beijing of destabilising the region and a top Chinese general retorting that his comments were “threat and intimidation”.

Using unusually strong language, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel took aim at Beijing’s handling of territorial disputes with its Asian neighbours.

“In recent months, China has undertaken destabilising, unilateral actions asserting its claims in the South China Sea,” Hagel said.

He warned Beijing that the United States was committed to its geopolitical rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region and “will not look the other way when fundamental principles of the international order are being challenged”.

Hagel said the United States took no position on the merits of rival territorial claims in the region, but added: “We firmly oppose any nation’s use of intimidation, coercion, or the threat of force to assert these claims.”

His speech at Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s biggest security forum, provoked an angry reaction from the deputy chief of staff of the Chinese Army, Lieutenant-General Wang Guanzhong.

“I felt that Secretary Hagel’s speech is full of hegemonism, threat and intimidation,” he told reporters just after the speech.

Wang said the speech was aimed at causing trouble in the Asia-Pacific.

Hagel’s comments followed the keynote address by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the same forum on Friday evening, who pledged “utmost support” to Southeast Asian countries, several of which are locked in maritime disputes with China.

“I felt that they were just trying to echo each other,” Wang said.

Hagel later held a bilateral meeting with Wang, where the Chinese military leader expressed his surprise at the US defence secretary’s speech.

“You were very candid this morning, and to be frank, more than our expectations,” he said. “Although I do think those criticisms are groundless, I do appreciate your candour  likewise we will also share our candour.”

A senior US defence official said that, despite Wang’s opening remarks, the tone of the meeting had been “businesslike and fairly amicable”.

While Hagel went over ground he covered in his speech, Wang spent most of the meeting talking about US-China military-to-military contacts, including Chinese participation in forthcoming military exercises, the official said.

The US official said Hagel’s speech had been well received by other Asian delegations with the exception of China.

Only if provoked

In Beijing, President Xi Jinping said China would not initiate aggressive action in the South China Sea but would respond if others did, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

“We will never stir up trouble, but will react in the necessary way to the provocations of countries involved,” Xinhua quoted Xi as saying in a meeting on Friday with Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia.

China claims almost the entire oil- and gas-rich South China Seas, and dismisses competing claims from Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. Japan also has a territorial row with China over islands in the East China Sea.

Tensions have surged in recent weeks after China placed an oil rig in waters claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines said Beijing could be building an airstrip on a disputed island.

Japan’s defence ministry said Chinese SU-27 fighters came as close as 50 metres to a Japanese OP-3C surveillance plane near disputed islets last week and within 30 metres of a YS-11EB electronic intelligence aircraft.

Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said Tokyo perceived an “increasingly severe regional security environment”.

“It is unfortunate that there are security concerns in the East and South China Seas,” he said. “Japan as well as all concerned parties must uphold the rule of law and never attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force.”

On Friday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pitched his plan for Japan to take on a bigger international security role, and told the Singapore forum that Tokyo would offer its “utmost support” to Southeast Asian countries in their efforts to protect their seas and airspace.

In a pointed dig at China, he said Japan would provide coastguard patrol boats to the Philippines and Vietnam.

Japan offer snubbed

Wang, China’s deputy chief of staff, also snubbed an offer for talks with Japan made by Defence Minister Onodera, the semi-official China News Service said.

“This will hinge on whether the Japanese side is willing to amend the erroneous policy towards China, and improve relations between China and Japan,” he said. “Japan should correct its mistakes as soon as possible to improve China-Japan ties.”

The strong comments at the Shangri-La Dialogue come as Abe pursues a controversial push to ease restrictions of the post-war, pacifist constitution that has kept Japan’s military from fighting overseas since World War II.

Despite memories of Japan’s harsh wartime occupation of much of Southeast Asia, several countries in the region may view Abe’s message favourably because of China’s increasing assertiveness.

Hagel repeatedly stressed President Barack Obama’s commitment to the Asia-Pacific rebalance and said the strong US military presence in the region would endure.

“To ensure that the rebalance is fully implemented, both President Obama and I remain committed to ensuring that any reductions in US defence spending do not come at the expense of America’s commitments in the Asia-Pacific,” he said.

KIEV — Ukraine accused Russia on Saturday of unleashing a mass propaganda campaign to persuade global powers not to recognise an election that gave the presidency to a pro-Western tycoon.

The United States for its part acknowledged a “fundamental disagreement” with Russia and said President Barack Obama would extend his support to Petro Poroshenko when he meets the winner of the May 25 ballot in Warsaw on Wednesday.

The months-long fight for the future of the ex-Soviet state — splintered between a more nationalist west and a heavily Russified southeast — has killed more than 300 people and resurrected the geopolitical barriers of the Cold War.

Ukraine’s separatist insurgency only intensified after 48-year-old chocolate maker Poroshenko won 54.7 per cent of a poll that was disrupted across swathes of the eastern rust belt.

Government forces reported suffering no casualties on Saturday while repelling two rebel attempts to recapture an airport in the eastern hub of Donetsk the insurgents seized a day after the election at the cost of 40 fighters — most of them Russian nationals.

A Donetsk separatist leader denied staging any attack and said six of his men were killed when they tried to retrieve the bodies of those slain in the original airport raid.

Ukraine’s acting foreign minister said Russia was now using every means at its disposal to unsettle the new Kiev leaders and regain control over its historic domain.

“Five days since elections, there has been no official recognition yet. Obviously, the Russian Federation doesn’t have legal grounds to question the election’s legitimacy,” Andriy Deshchytsya wrote in an opinion piece published in Saturday’s edition of the English-language Kyiv Post.

“The massive... information campaign Kremlin has launched these days, with an avalanche of doubletalk and fake news, signals one thing — this is Russia’s last chance to try shifting the balance of international public opinion,” he wrote.

‘Fundamental disagreement’ 

Russia on Friday accused Ukraine of breaching the 1949 Geneva Conventions protecting civilians in wartime by killing peaceful citizens during its seven-week “anti-terrorist operation” in the industrial regions of Lugansk and Donetsk.

And a furious information campaign by Moscow media portrays Kiev protesters as “fascists” and accuses the army of waging a “punitive operation” — the term once used to portray Nazi atrocities during World War II.

But Washington praised Ukraine for showing utmost “restraint” and accused the pro-Russian militias of “murder, kidnapping and looting”.

“We have a fundamental disagreement with the Russians about what the Ukrainian government is doing and the validity of their own right to maintain calm and order in their own country,” US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday expressed alarm over the sudden emergence of fighters from Russia’s war-ravaged region of Chechnya among the insurgents.

Psaki told reporters that “we do feel that there’s a Russian hand involved” in the Chechen gunmen’s entry into the fray.

But Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov said such charges were “absolutely untrue”.

“There are only 14 Chechens there, by our count,” Kadyrov told Russian state television.

Russian President Vladimir Putin — keen on seeing Ukraine join a post-Soviet economic union that includes only Belarus and Kazakhstan — promised to “respect” the will of Ukrainian voters but is yet to congratulate Poroshenko on his win.

Neither has he accepted Poroshenko’s invitation to hold the first meeting between the two neighbours’ since the February uprising at D-Day commemorations in Normandy on June 6.

But Washington said Russia had taken a small step to relieve tensions by pulling back two-thirds of the 40,000 soldiers it had massed at Ukraine’s border since its March seizure of the Crimea peninsula.

“These initial steps are positive, but we would like to see the full withdrawal,” Psaki said.

Missing monitors 

The increasingly volatile conflict — growing ever more complex as rivalries emerge among rebel commanders — has ensnared a steadily climbing number of Europeans tasked with helping to resolve a crisis that has shaken the very foundation of Ukraine.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said on Saturday that it had still heard no news from two small international teams detained by gunmen at roadblocks on Monday and Thursday.

The Vienna-based organisation — formed in the 1970s as a forum for dialogue during the Cold War and now a principal player in the worst East-West stand-off since that era — lost contact with a four-member team outside Donetsk on Monday.

Four more European members of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine and their local translator went missing on Thursday about 100 kilometres west of the Russian border in the province of Lugansk.

BANGKOK — In junta-ruled Thailand, the simple act of reading in public has become an act of resistance.

On Saturday evening in Bangkok, a week and a half after the army seized power in a coup, about a dozen people gathered in the middle of a busy, elevated walkway connecting several of the capital’s most luxurious shopping malls.

As pedestrians trundled past, the protesters sat down, pulled out book titles such as George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” a dystopian novel about life in a totalitarian surveillance state — and began to read.

In a country where the army has vowed to crack down on anti-coup protesters demanding elections and a return to civilian rule, in a place where you can be detained for simply holding something that says “Peace Please” in the wrong part of town, the small protest was a major act of defiance — a quiet demonstration against the army’s May 22 seizure of power and the repression that has accompanied it.

“People are angry about this coup, but they can’t express it,” said a human rights activist who asked to be identified only by her nickname, Mook, for fear of being detained.

“So we were looking for an alternative way to resist, a way that is not confrontational,” she said. “And one of those ways is reading.”

Their defiance, if you can call it that, is found in the titles they chose. Among them: “Unarmed Insurrection,” ‘’The Politics of Despotic Paternalism,” ‘’The Power of Non-Violent Means.”

The coup, Thailand’s second in eight years, deposed an elected government that had insisted for months that the nation’s fragile democracy was under attack from protesters, the courts and, finally, the army. The junta’s leader says the military had to intervene to restore order after half a year of debilitating protests that had crippled the government and triggered sporadic violence that killed 28 people and injured more than 800.

In their bid to maintain peace, the army also has made clear that it will tolerate no dissent. The junta has censored the media and issued warnings to citizens to avoid inciting conflict and antagonising the divided country’s political rivals. The list of targets so far has been long.

At least 14 partisan TV networks have been shut down along with nearly 3,000 unlicensed community radio stations. Independent international TV channels such as CNN and BBC have been blocked along with more than 300 Web pages, including New York-based Human Rights Watch’s Thailand page. Journalists and academics have been summoned by the army. Activists have fled the country.

On Wednesday, a sudden interruption of access to Facebook fuelled widespread speculation that the nation’s new rulers were testing their censorship power; the junta, though, insisted it was merely a technical glitch.

Kasama Na Nagara, who works in the financial sector and joined the small book reading protests because she wanted her voice to be heard, said about 20 people were participating. Saturday marked the third day that the group had organised such a protest. They have been careful to avoid soldiers.

On Friday, the group was supposed to gather on another walkway where they had conducted a reading a day earlier. But when troops showed up, they called it off.

Other groups of protesters, mostly numbering in the hundreds, have marched through Bangkok and scuffled with troops several times over the last week, though no injuries have been reported. They have carried signs with messages clearly directed at the junta, including “No dictatorship” and “Free Thailand. Pro-Democracy. Anti-Coup.” Some have shown up with masks and black tape across their mouths.

Both groups are breaking a junta order banning political gatherings of five people or more.

Human Rights organisations are deeply concerned over how far the clampdown will go.

Some people have begun using encrypted chat apps on their smartphones, for fear of being monitored. And at least one major bookstore in Bangkok, Kinokuniya, has pulled from its shelves political titles that could be deemed controversial.

So far, Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” in which authorities operating under the aegis of “Big Brother” fit homes with cameras to monitor the intimate details of people’s personal lives, is not among them.

“But we have Big Brother watching us now,” Kasama said. “It has become too risky to speak out. It’s sad. But it’s safer to be silent in Thailand right now.”