World

BARCELONA — The Spanish government on Monday rolled out a legal roadblock to stop the Catalonia region voting on independence, branding the planned ballot an affront to the sovereignty of Spain.

After Catalonia's President Artur Mas staked his leadership on the issue by calling the vote for November 9, the national government responded by filing a constitutional challenge.

Conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he "deeply" regretted Mas' move, saying it "divides Catalans, alienates them from Europe and the rest of Spain and seriously harms their welfare".

He said the government had sent the appeal to the constitutional court and that Mas' measures would be suspended as soon as that tribunal accepted the appeal, pending a final decision by its judges.

Buoyed by mass street demonstrations, Mas has pushed ahead for a vote in defiance of Rajoy's warnings.

Since he signed a decree on Saturday calling the vote, a luminous clock on Barcelona's historic Sant Jaume Square has been ticking down the seconds to November 9.

"You cannot use the law to prevent people indefinitely from stating their opinion," Mas said in a television interview on Sunday in anticipation of Monday's appeal.

"Voting on November is the best thing for everyone because it will allow us and also the Spanish government to know what the Catalan people's opinion is."

Rajoy retorted on Monday that the right to decide on a region's status belonged to "all of the Spanish people" under the country's 1978 constitution — the keystone of Spain's democracy after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco.

"There is nothing and no one, no power nor institution, that can break this principle of sole sovereignty," Rajoy told reporters after an extraordinary Cabinet meeting.

The appeal did not put off supporters of independence, who vowed to continue preparing for the vote, setting up a tense standoff over the coming weeks.

"We are committed to voting on November 9," said Oriol Junqueras, leader of the left-wing Catalan nationalist party ERC, which is allied with Mas' conservative CiU grouping in the regional parliament.

"We are aware of the great difficulties we will face in the coming days but we are ready to face those difficulties."

Fired up by Scotland's independence referendum earlier this month, vast crowds turned out in Barcelona on September 11 to demand their own vote.

Scottish voters eventually chose not to be independent from Britain.

But like Scotland, Catalonia "wants to be heard and it wants to vote", Mas said.

Mas has vowed to let Catalans vote on independence but has also promised to respect Spanish law.

He has hinted that if the government blocks the vote, he could put his leadership at stake in an early regional election, which could serve as a plebiscite on the issue.

Catalonia is Spain's economic powerhouse, accounting for about a fifth of the country's economy. But like the rest of Spain, it suffered from the 2008 property crash and resulting economic downturn.

Proud of their Catalan language and culture, many of the region's 7.5 million inhabitants feel short-changed by the government in Madrid which redistributes their taxes.

The independence movement in Catalonia has gathered strength in recent years as Spain's economic crisis has increased unemployment and hardship in the region and swelled its debts.

Catalonia formally adopted the status of a "nation" in 2006 but the constitutional court overruled that claim.

The main opposition Socialist Party is calling for a constitutional reform instead of a vote to answer Catalan demands for greater autonomy.

The Socialists' leader Pedro Sanchez on Monday said the referendum plan "deeply damages Spanish democracy".

MOSCOW — Moscow called on Sunday for a new "reset 2.0" in relations with Washington, saying the situation in Ukraine that had led to Western sanctions against Russia was improving thanks to Kremlin peace initiatives.

Washington and Brussels accuse Moscow of supporting a pro-Russian rebellion in east Ukraine and have imposed sanctions, which they have repeatedly tightened since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March.

The conflict has brought relations between Moscow and the West to their lowest level since the end of the Cold War. US President Barack Obama said last week that the sanctions could be lifted if Russia takes the path of peace and diplomacy.

In television interviews, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was time to repeat the "reset", a word Washington used to describe an attempt to mend ties early in Obama's presidency.

But he also lashed out at NATO's "Cold War mentality", criticised Washington for excluding Russia's ally Bashar Assad from its campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria, and said Washington "can no longer act as the prosecutor, the judge, and the executioner in every part of the world".

"We are absolutely interested in bringing the ties to normal but it was not us who destroyed them. Now they require what the American would probably call a 'reset'," Lavrov said, according to a transcript of one interview on his ministry's website.

"The current US administration is destroying today much of the cooperation structure that it created itself along with us. Most likely, something more will come up — a reset No. 2 or a reset 2.0," he told Russia's Channel 5 television.

Shortly after Obama took office in 2009, his then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton presented Lavrov with a red “reset” button intended to signal a fresh start to relations that had been strained under Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush.

In a diplomatic gaffe much mocked at the time, the button bore a Russian label that said “overload” instead of “reset”; the two words are similar in Russian.

Lavrov said that thanks to “initiatives of the Russian President”, the situation was improving on the ground in Ukraine, where a ceasefire has been in place for several weeks.

The September 5 truce is largely holding though some fighting has continued in places including the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.

“The ceasefire is taking shape, though of course not without problems. Monitoring mechanisms have been introduced, talks between Russia, the European Union and Ukraine have started, gas talks have restarted,” Lavrov said.

Western countries say thousands of Russian troops have fought in Ukraine and accuse Moscow of sending weapons, including a surface-to-air missile used to shoot down a Malaysian airliner over rebel-held territory in July. Moscow denies participating in the conflict or arming the rebels.

Cold war

Speaking to Russia’s state-funded international broadcaster, RT, Lavrov said “NATO still has the Cold War mentality”, and Moscow needed to modernise its conventional and nuclear arms, though he denied this would lead to “a new arms race”.

Lavrov also repeated Russian criticism of the US-led air campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria, accusing Washington of a “double standard” for refusing to cooperate with Syrian president Assad. Washington has repeatedly called for Assad’s dismissal and backed some of the rebels fighting to topple him since early 2011.

“There’s no room for petty grievances in politics,” Lavrov told RT. “I very much hope that the United States will finally... realise that they can no longer act as the prosecutor, the judge, and the executioner in every part of the world and that they need to cooperate to resolve issues.”

Lavrov said that despite the Western sanctions, Russia did not feel isolated on the world stage. Moscow has responded to the sanctions by banning most Western food imports.

“We feel no isolation. But, having said that, I want to emphasise in particular that we do not want to go to extremes, and abandon the European and American directions in our foreign economic cooperation,” Lavrov told Channel 5.

“We have no desire to continue a sanctions war, trading blows,” Lavrov also said. “First of all, it is important that our partners understand the futility of ultimatums and threats.”

HONG KONG — Hong Kong police fired volleys of tear gas to disperse pro-democracy protests on Sunday and baton-charged a crowd blocking a key road in the government district in defiance of official warnings against illegal demonstrations.

Chaos had engulfed the city's Admiralty district as chanting protesters converged on police barricades surrounding more demonstrators who had earlier launched a "new era" of civil disobedience to pressure Beijing into granting full democracy.

Police, in lines five deep in places and wearing helmets and gas masks, used pepper spray against activists and shot tear gas into the air. The crowds fled several hundred yards, scattering their umbrellas and hurling abuse at police "cowards".

The demonstrators regrouped and returned however, and by early evening tens of thousands of protesters were thronging streets, including outside the prominent Pacific Place shopping mall that leads towards the Central financial district.

"If today I don't stand out, I will hate myself in future," said taxi driver Edward Yeung, 55, as he swore at police on the frontline. "Even if I get a criminal record it will be a glorious one."

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a formula known as "one country, two systems" that guaranteed a high degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China. Universal suffrage was set as an eventual goal.

But Beijing last month rejected demands for people to freely choose the city's next leader, prompting threats from activists to shut down Central in what is being seen as the most tenacious civil disobedience action since Britain handed over its former colony.

China wants to limit elections to a handful of candidates loyal to Beijing.

Police in full riot equipment later fired repeated rounds of tear gas to clear some of the roads in Admiralty and pushed the crowds towards central. Health authorities later said some 30 people needed treatment.

Police had not used tear gas in Hong Kong since breaking up protests by South Korean farmers against the World Trade Organisation in 2005.

"We will fight until the end... we will never give up," said Peter Poon, a protester in his 20s, adding that they may have to make a temporary retreat through the night.

Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying had earlier pledged "resolute" action against the protest movement, known as Occupy Central with Love and Peace.

"The police are determined to handle the situation appropriately in accordance with the law," Leung said, less than two hours before the police charge began.

A spokesperson for China's Hong Kong and Macau affairs office added that the central government fully supported Hong Kong's handling of the situation "in accordance with the law".

Communist Party leaders in Beijing are concerned about calls for democracy spreading to cities on the mainland, threatening their grip on power. Such dissent would never be tolerated on the mainland, where student protests in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square calling for democracy were crushed with heavy loss of life on June 4, 1989.

On the mainland, the phrase "Occupy Central" was blocked on Sunday afternoon on Weibo, China's version of twitter. It had been allowed earlier in the day.

Later, a Hong Kong government statement urged the Occupy organisers to bring an end to the "chaos" for the overall interest of Hong Kong.

A tearful Occupy organiser Benny Tai said he was proud of people's determination to fight for "genuine" universal suffrage, but that the situation was getting out of control, RTHK reported. He said he believed he would face heavy punishment for initiating the movement.

Publishing tycoon Jimmy Lai, a key backer of the democracy movement, said he wanted as big a crowd of protesters as possible, after a week of student demonstrations, to thwart any crackdown.

"The more Hong Kong citizens come, the more unlikely the police can clear up the place," said Lai, also wearing a plastic cape and workmen's protective glasses. "Even if we get beaten up, we cannot fight back. We will win this war with love and peace."

Organisers said as many as 80,000 people thronged the streets in Admiralty, galvanised by the arrests of student activists on Friday. No independent estimate of the crowd numbers was available.

TOKYO — Thirty-one people were presumed dead on Sunday near the peak of a Japanese volcano that erupted a day earlier, catching hundreds of hikers unawares as it belched out clouds of rock and ash.

The deaths on Mount Ontake, 200km west of Tokyo, were the first from a Japanese volcanic eruption since 1991.

Police said the 31 were found in "cardio-pulmonary arrest", but declined to confirm their deaths pending a formal examination, as per Japanese custom. Public broadcaster NHK and the Kyodo news agency later reported that four, all male, had been confirmed dead.

An official in the area said rescue efforts had been called off due to rising levels of toxic gas near the peak, as well as approaching nightfall.

Hundreds of people, including children, were stranded on the mountain, a popular hiking site, after it erupted without warning on Saturday, sending ash pouring down the slope for more than 3km.

Most made their way down later on Saturday but about 40 spent the night near the 3,067-metre peak. Some wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled in the basement of buildings.

"The roof on the mountain lodge was destroyed by falling rock, so we had to take refuge below the building," one told NHK national television. "That's how bad it was."

More than 40 people were injured, several with broken bones.

Earlier, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency had said authorities were trying to confirm the whereabouts of 45 people.

It was not clear whether those 45 included the 31 people found in cardio-pulmonary arrest.

The volcano was still erupting on Sunday, pouring smoke and ash hundreds of metres into the sky. Ash was found on cars as far as 80km away.

Volcanoes erupt periodically in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active nations, but there have been no fatalities since 1991, when 43 people died in a pyroclastic flow, a superheated current of gas and rock, at Mount Unzen in the southwest of the country.

Ontake, Japan's second-highest volcano, last erupted seven years ago. Its last major eruption was in 1979.

Satoshi Saito, a 52-year-old hiker who climbed Ontake on Saturday and descended less than an hour before the eruption, said the weather was good and the mountain, known for its autumn foliage, was crowded with people carrying cameras.

"There were no earthquakes or strange smells on the mountain when I was there," Saito, who usually climbs Ontake several times a year, told Reuters. He also said there were no warnings of possible eruptions posted on the trail.

"But a man who runs a hotel near the mountain told me that the number of small earthquakes had risen these past two months, and everyone thought it was weird," Saito said.

Enveloping blackness

Video footage on the Internet showed huge grey clouds boiling towards climbers at the peak and people scrambling to descend as blackness enveloped them. NHK footage showed windows in a mountain lodge darkening and people screaming as heavy objects pelted the roof.

"All of a sudden ash piled up so quickly that we couldn't even open the door," Shuichi Mukai, who worked in a mountain lodge just below the peak, told Reuters. The building quickly filled with hikers taking refuge.

"We were really packed in, maybe 150 people. There were some children crying, but most people were calm. We waited there in hard hats until they told us it was safe to come down."

Flights at Tokyo's Haneda Airport suffered delays on Saturday as planes changed routes to avoid the volcano, but were mostly back to normal by Sunday, an airport spokeswoman said.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire", a horseshoe-shaped band of fault lines and volcanoes circling the edges of the Pacific Ocean, and is home to 110 active volcanoes.

One of these, Sakurajima at the southern end of the western island of Kyushu, is 50km from Kyushu Electric Power's Sendai nuclear plant, which was approved to restart by Japan's nuclear regulator earlier in September.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority has said the chance of volcanic activity during the Sendai plant's lifespan is negligible, even though five giant calderas, crater-like depressions formed by past eruptions, are also nearby.

Kyushu Electric has said it will install new monitoring equipment around nearby calderas and develop plans to remove highly radioactive fuel to a safer site if the threat of an eruption is detected.

There are no nuclear plants near Ontake.

An official at the volcano division of the Japan Meteorological Agency said that, while there had been a rising number of small earthquakes detected at Ontake since September 10, the eruption could not have been predicted easily.

"There were no other signs of an imminent eruption, such as earth movements or changes on the mountain's surface," the official told Reuters. "With only the earthquakes, we couldn't really say this would lead to an eruption."

HONG KONG — Hong Kong riot police used pepper spray to disperse protesters around government headquarters on Saturday, fuelling tension ahead of a planned sit-in by pro-democracy activists to oppose Beijing's tightening grip on the city.

Clashes through the night between police carrying riot shields and scores of demonstrators underscore the challenges China faces in Hong Kong as a restive younger generation challenges its influence in the former British colony.

Several people suffered minor injuries.

The protesters got into the city's main government compound late on Friday by forcing their way through a police cordon and scaling perimeter fences in the culmination of a weeklong rally to demand free elections.

They were removed one by one, some of them carried away, according to witnesses. On Saturday, hundreds were still sitting near the compound close to Hong Kong's financial district.

"The police have used disproportionate force to stop the legitimate actions of the students and that should be condemned," said Benny Tai, one of the three main organisers of the pro-democracy Occupy Central movement.

Police arrested 61 people in the clearance operation, including 48 men and 13 women.

Several thousand protesters had massed on streets outside the headquarters in the early hours of Saturday in support of those who had stormed inside, shouting "retreat, retreat, retreat" as police advanced and tried to stop them charging.

Many protesters used umbrellas to shield themselves from the pepper spray. Those who got hit used water to rinse their eyes.

"I paid my highest respect to every soldier who defends till the last moment... Civil disobedience — it continues to happen," said student leader Lester Shum on his Facebook page.

Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997 under a formula known as "one country, two systems", with a high degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China. Universal suffrage was set as an eventual goal.

But Beijing last month rejected demands for people to freely choose the city's next leader in 2017, prompting threats from activists to shut down the Central financial district in a so-called Occupy central campaign. China wants to limit elections to a handful of candidates loyal to Beijing.

Student activists urged people to gather on Saturday night for fresh demonstrations.

Leaders of the local Occupy movement arrived to show their support for the protests. They plan to blockade the financial district on October 1, a holiday, hoping it will escalate into one of most disruptive protests in Hong Kong for decades.

The clashes were the most heated so far in a series of anti-Beijing protests. Police arrested six people overnight, including teenage student leader Joshua Wong, who was dragged away by police, kicking, screaming and bleeding from his arm, after he called on the protesters to charge the government premises.

"Hong Kong's future belongs to you, you and you," Wong, a thin 17-year-old with dark-rimmed glasses and bowl-cut hair, told cheering supporters before he was taken away.

"I want to tell C.Y. Leung and Xi Jinping that the mission of fighting for universal suffrage does not rest upon the young people, it is everyone's responsibility," he shouted, referring to Hong Kong's and China's leaders.

"I don't want the fight for democracy to be passed down to the next generation. This is our responsibility."

The protest came after more than 1,000 school pupils rallied peacefully to support university students demanding democracy, capping the week-long campaign that has seen classroom strikes and a large cut-out paraded in public depicting the city's leader Leung as the devil.

MONROVIA, Liberia — Liberia's chief medical officer is placing herself under quarantine for 21 days after her office assistant died of Ebola.

Bernice Dahn, a deputy health minister who has represented Liberia at regional conferences intended to combat the ongoing epidemic, told The Associated Press on Saturday that she did not have any Ebola symptoms but wanted to ensure she was not infected.

The World Health Organisation says 21 days is the maximum incubation period for Ebola, which has killed more than 3,000 people across West Africa and is hitting Liberia especially hard. WHO figures released Friday said 150 people died in the country in just two days.

Liberia's government has asked people to keep themselves isolated for 21 days if they think they have been exposed. The unprecedented scale of the outbreak, however, has made it difficult to trace the contacts of victims and quarantine those who might be at risk.

"Of course we made the rule, so I am home for 21 days," Dahn said Saturday. "I did it on my own. I told my office staff to stay at home for the 21 days. That's what we need to do."

Health officials, especially frontline doctors and nurses, are particularly vulnerable to Ebola, which is spread via the body fluids of infected patients. Earlier this month, WHO said more than 300 healthworkers had contracted Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three most-affected countries. Nearly half of them had died.

Making sure healthcare workers have the necessary supplies, including personal protective equipment, has been a challenge especially given that many flights in and out of Ebola-affected countries have been canceled.

At an emergency meeting of the African Union on September 8, regional travel hub Senegal said it was planning to open a "humanitarian corridor" to affected countries.

Senegal was expected on Saturday to receive a flight carrying humanitarian staff from Guinea — the first time aid workers from one of the three most-affected countries were allowed in Senegal since the corridor was opened, said Alexis Masciarelli, spokesman for the World Food Programme.

The airport in Dakar, Senegal's capital, has set up a terminal specifically for humanitarian flights where thorough health checks will be conducted, Masciarelli said.

The current plan calls for two weekly rotations between Dakar and Ebola-affected countries and a third weekly rotation between Dakar and Accra, Ghana, where a special UN mission to fight Ebola will be headquartered, Masciarelli said.

Mustapha Sidiki Kaloko, African Union commissioner for social affairs, said Saturday he plans to travel to West Africa Sunday to meet regional leaders and airline executives to try to convince them to resume flights cancelled because of Ebola.

The first batch of an AU Ebola task force, totalling 30 people, left for Liberia on September 18, Kaloko said. Task force members are expected to arrive in Sierra Leone on October 5 and in Guinea by the end of October, he said.

GENEVA/FREETOWN — The spread of Ebola seems to have stabilised in Guinea, one of three West African states worst-hit by the disease, but a lack of beds and resistance in affected communities means its advance continues elsewhere, the World Health Organisation said.

Underscoring drastic measures being taken to halt the worst outbreak on record of the deadly virus, Sierra Leone put three more districts — home to over a million people and major mining operations — under indefinite quarantine.

An outbreak that began in a remote corner of Guinea has taken hold of much of neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing nearly 3,000 people in just over six months. Senegal and Nigeria have recorded cases but, for now, contained them.

World leaders and international organisations have warned of a crisis threatening the stability and economies of a string of fragile West African states. But they have also been criticised for doing too little too late.

"The upward epidemic trend continues in Sierra Leone and most probably also in Liberia," the WHO said in its latest update on the disease, which has killed about half of those confirmed and suspected to have been infected.

"However, the situation in Guinea, although still of grave concern, appears to have stabilised: between 75 and 100 new confirmed cases have been reported in each of the past five weeks," it added.

Experts are trying to straighten out data from the ground, where already weak local health systems over been overrun by one of the world's deadliest diseases, muddying information on the current situation.

But most warn that the number of cases recorded so far represents a fraction of the real total, with many victims unable find places to get treated or unwilling to come forward due to fears over the disease.

WHO said earlier this week that the total number of infections could reach 20,000 by November, months earlier than previously forecast. US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in the region by January if nothing was done.

Difficulties of isolation

Overnight, Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma announced that the districts of Port Loko and Bombali in the north and Moyamba in the south would be quarantined.

The step means five of the country's 14 districts are now isolated. The districts of Kailahum and Kenema, in the northeast close to Guinea and Liberia, were already quarantined.

"The isolation of districts and chiefdoms will definitely pose great difficulties for our people in those districts," Koroma said. "[But] the life of everyone and the survival of our country take precedence over these difficulties."

The extension of the quarantine follows a nationwide lockdown at the weekend that Koroma said had been a success but exposed "areas of greater challenges", including the need to rapidly build more treatment centres.

Under the new measures, people will be able to travel through quarantined districts during daylight hours so long as they do not stop. The World Food Programme is meant to provide food to residents living there.

The Ebola outbreak comes a decade into Sierra Leone and Liberia's recovery from intertwined civil wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the 1990s.

In this time, both nations have secured billions of dollars in investment, especially from mining firms looking to tap into their vast iron ore reserves.

However, firms operating in the region have appealed to world leaders to do more to fight the outbreak, which they said threatened the region's stability. Border closures and travel bans have hamstrung trade as well as the aid response.

Sierra Leone's new restrictions are likely to hit mining firms. Port Loko is home to London Mining's concession and African Minerals has its rail and port services there.

Axel Addy, Liberia's minister for commerce and industry, said his nation had secured imports of basic food staples until December, but the blow to its mining sector may trigger a recession next year.

Screening outsiders

Having spread slowly at first, a spike in Ebola cases and warnings of exponential spread in recent weeks spooked international leaders into greater pledges of action. The response is slowly picking up momentum.

Governments and organisations from across the world, including the United States, Great Britain, France, China and Cuba, have pledged military and civilian personnel alongside cash and medical supplies. But aid workers say it is still not enough.

The WHO said Liberia had 315 bed spaces for Ebola patients and aid agencies have promised to set up 440 more, but the country needs a further 1,550 beds that nobody has yet offered to provide. In Sierra Leone, 297 planned new beds would almost double existing capacity, but a further 532 were needed.

The lack of beds means those infected with Ebola are still being turned away from hospitals and must be cared for at home, where they risk infecting yet more people.

As a result, part of the aid response is now focusing on setting up care centres in communities and training locals, including 11,000 teachers in Liberia, to educate people about how to combat the disease.

The first 9,000 of a planned 50,000 kits — containing protective gowns, gloves and masks for family members to look after Ebola sufferers — arrived in Liberia, according to UNICEF.

However, WHO said these efforts were still being resisted in neglected, remote communities with a distrust of outsiders, like the one where eight members of an Ebola team were killed in a attack in southeast Guinea last week.

"There are reports from Fassankoni, Guinea, that communities have set up roadblocks to screen entering response teams."

KIEV — President Petro Poroshenko on Thursday proclaimed an end to the "most dangerous" part of Ukraine's pro-Russian uprising and the start of a post-war recovery that would lead to an EU membership bid in 2020.

But the upbeat message was clouded by new deadly clashes and a defiant decision by guerrillas to hold independent elections on November 2 that Poroshenko said he hoped Russia would not recognise.

The pro-Western leader told the first press conference since his June inauguration that he would never let a resurgent Kremlin and gunmen entrenched in Ukraine's eastern rust belt halt Kiev's ambition to break out of Russia's embrace.

"We suffered for too long in the socialist camp to let someone lower an iron curtain across our western border," Poroshenko said in reference to Ukraine's Soviet past.

"I have no doubt that the biggest, most dangerous part of the war is already behind us thanks to the heroism of Ukrainian soldiers."

The five-month conflict has killed more than 3,200 people and driven 650,000 from their homes across a bomb-scarred region that once served as the country's economic driving engine.

Poroshenko showed he was determined to continue on a Westward path as he unveiled a comprehensive package of social and economic reforms, dubbed Strategy 2020, which he said "will prepare Ukraine to apply for membership in the European Union in six years".

The plunge in relations between Moscow and Kiev came after the February ouster of a Moscow-backed leader, followed by the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea and its alleged backing of a bloody pro-Russian revolt.

An unexpected militia counteroffensive at the end of last month was only halted when Poroshenko agreed to a truce the Kremlin helped partially draft.

The plan called for rebel-held regions to hold local council elections on December 7 to help restore law and order.

But separatist leaders soon objected because it gave them only limited self-rule for three years. They now plan to form their own "Supreme Soviet" parliament and elect a formal government.

"I hope that neither Russia nor the rest of the world recognise elections called by self-proclaimed terrorist organisations in violation of Ukrainian law," Poroshenko said.

EU and NATO ambitions 

Poroshenko's revival programme includes 60 proposals to improve his country's chances of European Union membership — a bid the wealthier European nations currently view with mistrust.

The proposals include efforts to tackle rampant corruption and reform the country's bribe-infested justice system.

Poroshenko also promised to gain "energy independence" — a reference to Ukraine's heavy reliance on Russian natural gas.

A politically-charged energy price dispute — whose end EU officials will try to broker in Berlin on Friday — saw Russia cut off Ukraine's gas taps on June 16.

The row, along with the escalating costs of war and the shutdown of giant industries in the east, have only accelerated Ukraine's economic implosion.

Growth is expected to slow by 7 to 10 per cent this year and put still more pressure on Poroshenko ahead of parliamentary polls on October 26.

Poroshenko has responded to charges of weakness in the face of Russia by announcing plans to seek NATO membership — a step the Kremlin views as a direct national security threat.

The president reaffirmed his intentions on Thursday by tweeting that he had just "instructed the Cabinet minister to revoke Ukraine's non-aligned [nation] status".

Sealing Russian border

Both Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of supporting the rebels in eastern Ukraine by sending in elite forces and heavy weapons.

Russia denies the allegations and dismisses NATO satellite imagery purporting to show Russian troops in Ukraine as fabrications designed to back the military alliance's expansion towards its border.

But rebels are continuing to use sophisticated weapons to launch sporadic raids and on Thursday a soldier was killed on the outskirts of the government-held southeastern port of Mariupol.

Ending weeks of speculation, Poroshenko on Thursday ordered his government to prepare a temporary closure of the 2,000-kilometre land frontier with Russia as part of efforts to halt its "intervention" in Ukraine's state affairs.

A senior Ukrainian security source told AFP that the border security measures would affect all road traffic and come into force "soon".

A spokesman for Ukraine's state border service said no additional security measures had yet been taken and that cars were still allowed to pass along the dozens of border crossings linking the two countries.

It was not clear how Ukraine intended to implement the measures along the 260-kilometre stretch of the border controlled by insurgents in the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

But the decision look set to further hurt Ukraine's recovery chances by halting trade between the mutually dependent nations and increasing the likelihood of Russia adopting retaliatory steps.

UNITED NATIONS — US President Barack Obama on Wednesday slammed Russia's "aggression" in Ukraine but offered to lift sanctions against Moscow if it threw its weight behind an unravelling peace deal with Kiev.

The outstretched hand to Moscow came a day after pro-Russian guerrillas brushed off Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's limited self-rule offer and announced plans to set up their own parliaments in self-organised November 2 polls.

The autonomy offer was at the heart of the pro-Western leader's attempts to quell a revolt that has devastated the ex-Soviet nation's economy and revived a Cold War-era mistrust between Moscow and the West.

A tough-talking Obama told a special UN General Assembly session in New York that Russia was on the wrong side of history in Ukraine. But he also stressed that a ceasefire deal agreed earlier this month offered an opening towards diplomacy and peace.

"Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition," Obama told the General Assembly with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in attendance.

"We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression." 

But if Moscow "changes course", he added, "then we will lift our sanctions and welcome Russia's role in addressing common challenges".

Poroshenko himself has issued no comment since seeing his high-stakes bid to resolve a crisis that has killed more than 3,200 people so openly challenged just days after it was unveiled.

Poroshenko had proposed that rebel-held parts of the Russian-speaking east hold local council elections December 7 that would help war-scarred towns and cities restore basic services but not push ahead with any independence claims.

But the Kremlin appeared ready to ratchet up tensions by focusing state media on claims of the bodies of four tortured civilians being discovered in an eastern coal mine that had allegedly served as a Ukrainian military base.

The unconfirmed reports topped the headlines on Kremlin-run TV networks that provide most Russians with their news. The foreign minister said that "most likely, we are looking at war crimes that can never be justified".

Both the press office of Ukraine's eastern campaign and the National Guard — a part-volunteer force Moscow frequently brands as "fascists" — denied ever having control of the Donetsk industrial region mine.

Fresh shelling halted AFP attempts to visit the site.

Big guns pull back

Both Kiev and its Western allies fear Putin is trying to turn the east of Ukraine into a "frozen conflict" similar to those that have already given Moscow effective control over parts of the ex-Soviet nations Georgia and Moldova.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk — seen by some analysts as the leader of Kiev's hawkish "war camp" — is expected to raise these concerns when he takes his turn before the UN General Assembly later Wednesday.

Yatsenyuk will make sure "discussions continue on arms sales and more direct support to Ukraine's stand against Russia", Kiev's SP Adviser's brokerage said in a report.

The string of recent peace overtures have helped calm the deadliest fighting and allowed some of the 650,000 people driven out of their homes by the conflict start rebuilding their lives.

Both sides have also begun pulling back their biggest guns and tanks from the front line in order to establish a 30-kilometre buffer zone that could be overseen by monitors from the OSCE pan-European security group.

The Kremlin has welcomed the withdrawal as a sign of Poroshenko admitting he did not need a war fought "until there are no more Ukrainians left standing".

Eurasia Group political risk consultancy said the current terms of the peace deal "yields Moscow an acceptable level of control over Ukraine and avoids further sanctions”.

"While the near term will bring some fragile calm, the fundamental clashes that underpin this entire crisis cannot stay hidden for long," it warned.

BANGALORE, India — India won Asia's race to Mars on Wednesday when its unmanned Mangalyaan spacecraft successfully entered the Red Planet's orbit after a 10-month journey on a tiny budget.

Scientists at mission control let out wild cheers and applause after the gold-coloured craft fired its main engine and slipped into the planet's orbit following a 660 million kilometre voyage.

"History has been created. We have dared to reach out into the unknown and have achieved the near impossible," a jubilant Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) base near Bangalore.

"The success of our space programme is a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation," Modi said, grinning broadly and embracing the ISRO's chairman.

The success of the mission, which is designed to search for evidence of life on the Red Planet, is a huge source of national pride for India as it competes with its Asian rivals for success in space.

Indians from ministers to students and office workers took to Twitter to express pride, with the Hindi slogan "JaiHind" or "Hail India" trending on the microblogging site.

India has been trying to keep up with neighbouring giant China, which has poured billions of dollars into its programme and plans to build a manned space station by the end of the decade.

At just $74 million, the mission cost is less than the estimated $100 million budget of the sci-fi blockbuster "Gravity". 

It also represents just a fraction of the cost of NASA's $671 million MAVEN spacecraft, which successfully began orbiting the fourth planet from the sun on Sunday. 

India now joins an elite club of the United States, Russia and Europe who can boast of reaching Mars. More than half of all missions to the planet have ended in failure, including China's in 2011 and Japan's in 2003.

No single nation had previously succeeded at its first go, although the European Space Agency, which represents a consortium of countries, pulled off the feat at its first attempt.

NASA sends congratulations 

Scientists announced at 8:02am (0232 GMT) that Mangalyaan had entered the orbit. Now the probe is expected to study the planet's surface and scan its atmosphere for methane, which could provide evidence of some sort of life form.

Mangalyaan is carrying a camera, an imaging spectrometer, a methane sensor and two other scientific instruments.

NASA congratulated India's "Mars arrival", welcoming Mangalyaan, which means Mars vehicle in Hindi, in a tweet to "the missions studying the Red Planet".

The European Space Agency also offered congratulations, tweeting "welcome to the club!" 

Indian engineers employed an unusual "slingshot" method for Mangalyaan's voyage, which began when it blasted off from India's southern spaceport on November 5 last year.

Lacking enough rocket power to blast directly out of Earth's atmosphere and gravitational pull, it orbited the Earth for several weeks while building up enough velocity to break free.

Critics of the programme say a country that struggles to feed its people adequately and where roughly half have no toilets should not be splurging on space travel.

But supporters say it is the perfect opportunity to showcase India's technological prowess as well as a chance for some one-upmanship on its rival Asian superpower.

"It's a low-cost technology demonstration," said Pallava Bagla, who has written a book on India's space programme.

"The rivalry between regional giants China and India exists in space too and this gives India the opportunity to inch ahead of China [and capture more of the market]," Bagla told AFP.

China offered its congratulations.

"This is the pride of India, the pride of Asia, and is a landmark of the progress of humankind's exploration in outer space," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a daily briefing.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh announced the mission launch in a speech on independence day 2012, shortly after China's attempt flopped when it failed to leave Earth's atmosphere.

India has launched 40 satellites for foreign nations since kick-starting its space programme five decades ago. But China launches bigger satellites.

ISRO scientists said the Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM, had "proved" India's "technological capabilities" and showed it was capable of venturing further.

"MOM is a major step towards our future missions in inter-planetary space," ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan told reporters.

The probe is expected to circle Mars for six months, about 500 kilometres from its surface, and send data back to Earth.