World

AHMEDABAD, India — The "world's factory" and the "world's back office" could together drive global economic growth, Chinese President Xi Jinping said as he began a rare visit to India on Wednesday, playing down mistrust that has long kept the Asian giants apart.

India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi, is determined to build closer relations with the world's second-largest economy, whose leader arrived on Modi's 64th birthday armed with pledges to invest billions of dollars in railways, industrial parks and roads.

"As the two engines of the Asian economy, we need to become cooperation partners spearheading growth," Xi wrote in a column in The Hindu newspaper before landing in India, where he received a warm and carefully choreographed welcome.

He said that, together, China's strong manufacturing base, and India's software and scientific skills had massive potential both as a production base and for creating a consumer market.

Xi flew with his wife directly to Ahmedabad, the main city in Modi's home state of Gujarat, where the Indian prime minister greeted him with a handshake and a bouquet of lilies.

Modi is keen on Chinese investment to help balance $65 billion in annual trade that is heavily tilted in China's favour. He is also seeking more access for India's IT services and pharmaceuticals to China.

The visit coincides with a slowdown in China's economy, which has prompted Chinese companies to look abroad for growth opportunities.

A $6.8 billion deal to set up two industrial parks for Chinese investment in India was on the cards, a senior Chinese official said in New Delhi, at a separate event where another $3.4 billion worth of agreements was signed between Chinese and Indian firms.

Indian airline IndiGo, the country's largest by market share, said it had sealed a $2.6 billion agreement on the sidelines of the summit with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to finance more than 30 new aircraft.

Further deals worth tens of billions of dollars were expected to be announced on the three-day visit, dwarfing the $400 million invested by China in India over the past 14 years.

The leaders may also discuss working together on civilian nuclear programmes and seek a solution for a long-running travel visa row, Indian officials said.

Dragon and elephant

Modi hopes the leaders of the world's two most populous nations will establish a personal rapport to match the warmth he shares with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who wished him happy returns in a phone call on Wednesday morning.

But beyond the smiles and the commercial embrace, ties between nuclear-armed India and China are marked by competition for energy, and regional clout as well as a festering border dispute that led to a brief war 52 years ago.

Days before the two leaders shook hands and smiled in Ahmedabad, friction emerged over an alleged Himalayan border incursion by China, and over a pact between India and Vietnam to explore for oil and gas in parts of the South China Sea claimed by Beijing.

In his column, Xi said the "Chinese Dragon" and the "Indian Elephant" both cherished peace, and shared one of the most dynamic and promising bilateral relations of the 21st century.

In one sign that India wanted the Xi visit to be a success, New Delhi asked the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to reschedule an event in the capital so that it would not clash with the Chinese president's trip there on Friday.

The Dalai Lama, whom Beijing labels a separatist seeking an independent Tibet, has lived in India since fleeing across the Himalayas after a failed uprising against Chinese rule of his homeland in 1959.

Police detained a small group of Tibetan protesters from outside China's embassy in Delhi on Wednesday. Other Tibetans were held in Gujarat.

Modi's ‘intensive’ foreign policy

In a little more than 100 days since he came to power, Modi has engaged in what his government has described as "an intensive state of global engagement", reaching out to smaller neighbours and clasping Japan's Abe in a bear hug on his first major trip outside South Asia. He is due to visit Washington and New York at the end of the month.

India has taken a tougher stance on Beijing's practice of issuing stapled, rather than printed, visas to Indian citizens from the disputed regions of Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj told her Chinese counterpart she expected China to accept a "one India policy".

"When they raised with us the issue of Tibet and Taiwan, we appreciated their sensitivities. So we also want that they should understand and appreciate our sensitivities regarding Arunachal," she told reporters earlier this month.

India said on Tuesday it would firmly defend its 3,500km border with China after domestic media reported a new face-off on the frontier.

"Given Modi's focus on boosting flagging infrastructure and manufacturing investment, India will increasingly focus its economic diplomacy eastward," said Sasha Riser-Kositsky of the Eurasia group in a research note on Wednesday.

"Yet despite these enormous investment pledges, Modi's pronounced nationalism and continued wariness about China will limit India's warming with Beijing while driving deeper strategic cooperation with Japan."

Modi is not the only regional leader seeking strategic influence, defence partners and economic opportunities.

Earlier this month, Abe visited Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, asserting Tokyo's interest in a region where it has ceded influence to China.

Xi followed this week with trips to the Maldives, the Indian Ocean island nation that New Delhi has long considered its area of influence, and Sri Lanka, where the two sides built on a blossoming relationship by agreeing to launch negotiations for a free trade agreement.

PARIS — The world is holding its breath but mostly hoping Scotland will vote "No" to independence from Britain in Thursday's referendum.

For reasons of self-interest and geopolitics, major powers from Beijing to Washington, and Moscow to New Delhi are quietly praying the United Kingdom holds together and does not create a contagious precedent of state fragmentation in unstable times.

Among London's European Union partners, Germany has said openly it would prefer Britain to stay together while other countries, notably Spain, Belgium and Italy, are hoping the Scottish vote does not create or exacerbate problems for their own national cohesion.

Russia and China, often at loggerheads with Britain in the United Nations Security Council, have strong domestic grounds to avoid wishing for the old imperial nation's discomfiture, since both are keen to stifle separatism at home.

Almost the only groups around the globe rooting for Scottish sovereignty are peoples without a separate state of their own, from Catalans in Spain to Kashmiris in India and Kurds scattered across Turkey, Iraq and Iran, many of whom yearn for self-determination.

The Catalan regional government in Barcelona wants to call its own non-binding independence referendum for November 9, but Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Wednesday described this and the Scottish vote as "a torpedo below the waterline of the European spirit".

The United States has made clear it wants Britain to remain a "strong, robust, united and effective partner", in President Barack Obama's words, while saying it was Scotland's choice.

London has long been Washington's most loyal and willing ally in the NATO defence pact and in military interventions in the Middle East and beyond, although that activism was called into question last year when the British parliament voted against joining proposed air strikes against Syria.

"The US has really hoped it wouldn't need a policy on this and that the independence issue would just go away," said Fiona Hill, a former US National Intelligence Council specialist on Europe now at the Brookings Institution think tank.

"No one really believed it was a possibility until the last few weeks. Now they are really having to start thinking about it," she said.

A large opinion poll lead for opponents of Scottish independence has shrunk dramatically over the summer and the "no" side is now only marginally ahead in most surveys.

US defence officials have aired concerns about the practical complications of dealing with an independent Scotland, which builds Britain's aircraft carriers and hosts its only nuclear submarine base. US diplomats also fear a breakup of the United Kingdom would weaken both parts economically and make a British exit from the EU more likely, weakening Washington's influence inside the bloc.

If Scotland votes to go its own way, Washington will want it in the EU and NATO, Hill said.

Few back independence

Outside the West, there are perhaps surprisingly few countries keen to see Britain break up.

India, a former British colony which won independence in 1947 after a campaign of civil disobedience, might have been expected to have some sympathy with the Scots.

The world's largest democracy with 1.2 billion citizens, India has long pressed for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council alongside the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. Some critics of the UN system contend that a breakup of Britain, reducing the UK to a rump with fewer than 60 million people, would strengthen the case of aspirants such as India, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia and Nigeria.

But new Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj blurted out her horror at the thought of New Delhi's former colonial master splitting apart, when questioned at a September 8 news conference.

"A break-up of the UK? God forbid," she responded. "I don't think any such possibility exists at the moment."

After a senior civil servant whispered in her ear, Swaraj corrected herself: "It is up to the people of Scotland to decide."

Secession and independence moves are too sensitive an issue for Russia to encourage, so the standard line from President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been that Scotland's future is an internal British matter.

Putin rose to power in 2000 by crushing a separatist revolt in the southern region of Chechnya and Moscow continues to have problems with armed secessionists and separatists in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus.

The president spelled out the Kremlin's line on Scotland in January, before Russia's seizure and annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, when a British journalist asked him about the vote.

"It's not our business. This is an internal problem in Britain," he said. "I think any nation has the right to self-determination, and in the Europe of today such an erosion of state sovereignty in the framework of a united Europe is simplified. But still staying within a single, strong state has certain advantages and it should not be forgotten."

Asked if he might invite an independent Scotland to join a Russian-led customs union of former Soviet states, Putin joked: "Yes, I don't exclude such a possibility."

China, which rejects any outside interference over its rule in Tibet or its relationship with Taiwan, has watched the Scottish debate with nervousness and some mystification.

While Beijing has taken no official position, the overseas edition of the official People's Daily wrote this week: "No doubt, this is a lose-lose situation for both parties."

Taiwan, the self-ruled island of 23 million people that China claims at its own, and where many citizens would like their own formal declaration of independence, has been watching Scotland closely.

"The referendum is a demonstration of democratic behaviour and procedure and it is a world value that the future of a place is determined by its residents," said Ketty Chen, an official of Taiwan's opposition Democratic Progressive Party.

Scottish independence campaigners have cited Norway, a prosperous Nordic oil and gas producer with a generous welfare state, as a role model for their countries.

But Norwegians — whose country split from a union with Sweden early in the 20th century — see limits to the parallels and some are warning the Scots against miscalculation.

"It is very different to go out of a union you have been in for such a long time as Scotland has with Britain, with the integrated economy, systems and agreements," Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg told Reuters. "I have no recommendation to the Scots on this, but I see it as a big project they are getting into with a very high degree of uncertainty," she said.

KIEV — Ukraine ratified a sweeping agreement with the European Union on Tuesday — an issue at the heart of the Russia-West crisis over its future — and sought to blunt the independence drive of Russian-backed separatists by offering them temporary and limited self-rule.

But though Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko savoured a historic triumph with parliament's seal of approval for the EU deal, his peacemaking efforts drew derision from separatists and some mainstream politicians, while his military reported three more deaths of Ukrainian servicemen despite an 11-day ceasefire.

"No nation has ever paid such a high price to become Europeans," Poroshenko told parliament referring to the bloody conflict that has gripped Ukraine since his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovich, walked away from the EU pact last November in favour of closer ties with Ukraine's former Soviet master, Russia.

After Yanukovich fled to Russia in February in the face of huge street protests, Moscow denounced a pro-Western "coup" against him, annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and subsequently backed armed pro-Russian separatists in eastern regions in their drive for independence from Kiev.

The chain of events has provoked the worst crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. The United States and its Western allies imposed sanctions against Moscow over a conflict with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in which more than 3,000 people have been killed.

Just moments earlier, at a closed session of parliament, deputies voted in support of Poroshenko's plan to grant "special status' to the 'people's republics' proclaimed by the separatists”.

Poroshenko elaborated the plan after reluctantly agreeing to a ceasefire on September 5 following battlefield losses and heavy Ukrainian casualties which Kiev said were caused by Russian troops entering the fight on behalf of the rebels.

The law would grant self-rule to separatist-minded regions for a three-year period, and allow them to "strengthen and deepen" relations with neighbouring Russian regions.

It would allow the heavily-armed rebels to set up their own police forces and hold their own local elections in December.

A separate law also crucially offered freedom from prosecution to separatists who have been fighting government forces — though there would be no amnesty for those involved in the July 17 shooting down of the Malaysian airliner nor people involved in purely criminal acts.

"These laws are an attempts to create a chance for the gradual peaceful settlement of the crisis in the Donbass," political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said.

"It has to be understood that other variants for the development of events are either freezing the conflict, or war in which Ukraine can lose the whole of the Donbass and possibly even more."

Rebels denounce

But they quickly drew criticism from both sides.

Rebel leader Andrei Purgin told Reuters in the separatist-held city of Donetsk: "The basic part of the document which forsees us politically staying on Ukrainian territory — that is, naturally, not acceptable."

"We will insist that any political unions with Ukraine are not possible now in principle," Purgin said, renewing charges against the Ukrainian military of violating the September 5 truce.

No breakdown of the parliamentary vote was given after the closed-door session.

Poroshenko risks falling foul of his supporters in the pro-Western establishment if he is perceived as laying the ground for a permanent breakaway state within Ukraine and under Russian protection, similar to those in other ex-Soviet states such as Moldova and Georgia.

"I consider it absolutely wrong to vote capitulation after all these losses. We need peace, and not a truce — but not at any price. We consider these draft laws to be a complete capitulation," said Oleh Tyahnibok, leader of the nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) Party, before the session.

"No-one gave the President the right to put the fate of the people of the Donbass [the industrial east] into the hands of terrorists. If this law comes into force it will only lead to an escalation of the conflict," Andriy Senchenko, a deputy of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) Party, said before the closed session.

Incidents of mortar shelling in and around Donetsk continued to put the ceasefire under pressure, and claimed further lives.

"The terrorists and Russian forces have stepped up their shelling of positions of the 'anti-terrorist operation'," said military spokesman Andriy Lysenko. Three more Ukrainian soldiers had been killed overnight, he told journalists.

A Reuters correspondent in Donetsk said that at least five mortar shells struck a funeral parlour and a car service station in the centre of Donetsk on Monday evening. Rebels said three people had been killed there.

"The truce is not being observed at all," Leon, a local commander, said. "Latterly they [the Ukrainian army] have begun to shell apartments, houses, where there are civilians."

Synchronised EU vote

The EU agreement on association and trade, whose ratification was synchronised with that of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, won unanimous support from the 355 deputies who took part in the vote.

Despite the Western sanctions against Moscow, the European Union and Ukraine agreed last Friday to delay implementation of the free-trade part of the EU deal until the end of next year in a concession to Russia.

Russia, which says its economy could be badly hurt by a sudden flood of duty-free EU goods onto its market via Ukraine, had threatened to slap import tariffs on Ukrainian goods from November 1.

Under the ambitious agreement, Ukraine will continue to enjoy privileged access to the EU market until January 1, 2016, but, in a concession by Brussels, it will not have to cut duties on imports from the EU in return.

Kiev had been concerned that allowing EU products more cheaply onto its market could undercut local goods, creating more problems for its weak economy.

Referring to this breathing space, Poroshenko told parliament: "The national economy has got a year and a half to become competitive and ready itself for competition with European markets.

"Thank you Europe for this multi-billion bonus!"

ROME — The number of hungry people in the world has fallen sharply over the past decade but 805 million, or one in nine of the global population, still do not have enough to eat, three UN food and agriculture agencies said on Tuesday.

The number of chronically undernourished people dropped by more than 100 million, equivalent to a country the size of the Philippines, according to a report by the United Nations food agency (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development and World Food Programme (WFP).

Government drives to improve nutrition have helped the developing world move towards a UN goal of halving the number of people suffering from hunger between 1990 and 2015, said the report titled "The State of Food Insecurity in the World".

But success stories such as Brazil mask struggles in countries like Haiti, where the number of hungry people rose from 4.4 million in 1990-92 to 5.3 million in 2012-14.

"We cannot celebrate yet because we must reach 805 million people without enough food for a healthy and productive life," WFP executive director Ertharin Cousin said in Rome.

The Ebola virus threatens food security in western Africa, while conflicts in places including Iraq and Syria have meant that people who once had enough food could lose reliable supplies "in just a matter of weeks", she said.

The ambitious goal to halve the absolute number of chronically undernourished people between 1990 and 2015 has been met by 25 developing countries, but there is not enough time for the whole world to get there by next year, the report said.

Brazil, Indonesia and Malawi, among others, have already achieved the development goal by halving the undernourished proportion of their populations through investments and policymaking in areas from agriculture to school meals.

But the agencies urged more efforts elsewhere, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, and southern and western Asia, to reduce the hungry share of the population in developing countries to 11.7 per cent, from 13.5 per cent today, by the end of 2015.

Conflicts and crises

Ebola, which has killed more than 2,400 people this year, endangered harvests and sent food prices soaring in West Africa, is rapidly creating a major food crisis there, Cousin said.

FAO issued a food security alert this month for Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, which were all net cereal importers even before the Ebola outbreak prompted border closures and quarantine zones, contributing to farm labour shortages.

Ongoing conflicts in Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic are preventing humanitarian efforts to help people that are affected, Cousin said, adding that WFP and other agencies needed an increase in donations.

Meanwhile, the advance of Islamic State fighters in Northern Iraq has caused concern over the availability of wheat, which FAO says is the most important food grain for humans.

"We are concerned about the fact that [IS] controls two of the major grain facilities in the country," Cousin said. "These are very worrying trends, when you have a party that can control the food that is required by the poorest in the country."

FAO raised its global cereals output forecast for 2014 earlier this month, partly due to unexpectedly high wheat crops in major producing countries, and said global food prices hit a near four-year low in August.

But this is not necessarily good news for the world's poor and hungry, FAO director general Jose Graziano Da Silva said, in part because farmers earn less from their crops.

"Low prices do not ensure that the poorest will get more food," he said. "If there is not... access, low prices will not be enough."

KIEV — Ukraine's defence minister said on Sunday that NATO countries were delivering weapons to his country to equip it to fight pro-Russian separatists and "stop" Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Valery Heletey told a news conference he had discussed weapons deliveries in bilateral meetings with NATO defence ministers during a NATO summit in Wales on September 4-5.

NATO officials have said it will not send "lethal assistance" to non-member Ukraine but member states may do so.

Earlier this month, a senior Ukrainian official said Kiev had agreed on the provision of weapons and military advisers from several members of the US-led alliance. Four of the five countries named, including the United States, denied this.

"We reached agreements in closed talks, without media, about ... those weapons that we currently need," said Heletey, who said Ukraine needed weapons "that could stop Putin".

"I have no right to disclose any specific country we reached that agreement with. But the fact is that those weapons are already on the way to us — that's absolutely true, I can officially tell you," he said.

Heletey said about 3,500 Russian troops were now on Ukrainian territory with a further 25,000 massed on the Russian side of the joint border.

Moscow denies accusations by Kiev and its Western backers that it has sent troops and tanks into eastern Ukraine to support separatists in a conflict with Ukrainian forces that has killed more than 3,000 people.

A ceasefire negotiated by envoys from Ukraine, Russia, the separatists and Europe's OSCE security watchdog has been in place in eastern Ukraine since September 5.

It is broadly holding despite regular but sporadic violations, especially in key flashpoints such as Donetsk.

ABERDEEN/LONDON – British Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to appeal to Scots’ emotions on his last visit to Scotland before this week’s historic referendum by warning them on Monday that a vote to leave the United Kingdom would be irreversible.

With opinion polls suggesting the referendum remains too close to call, Cameron, the leader of the ruling Conservative Party, which draws most of its support from England, will plead with voters not to use the referendum as a protest vote.

“There’s no going back from this. No re-run. If Scotland votes ‘yes’ the UK will split and we will go our separate ways forever,” he will say, according to advance extracts of his speech given to media by his advisers.

Cameron’s trip is a last-ditch effort to try to persuade Scotland’s many undecided voters to reject independence. Up to 500,000 people out of more than 4 million registered voters are estimated to be unsure how they will vote.

Campaigning in Scotland is fraught with difficulty for Cameron, whose right-leaning party is unpopular with Scots who have traditionally voted for the left-leaning opposition Labour Party and harbour bitter memories of former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s 1979-1990 stint in power.

Cameron’s Conservatives have only one of 59 British parliamentary seats in Scotland and the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) has elbowed Labour aside in recent years to emerge as the dominant political force.

It is also in charge of the devolved government there.

Cameron has conceded his public image as a privileged Englishman with aristocratic roots does not make him the best person to advocate against Scottish independence.

Scottish nationalists criticised him for staying away in the early months leading up to the vote for being complacent and now that he is showing his face, portray him as a condescending Englishman in no position to advise Scots on how to vote.

Details of his visits north of the English border are not revealed until the last minute for security reasons and critics say his advisers try to minimise his contact with the public to try to avoid nationalist heckling. The visit is expected to last only hours.

Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, was out campaigning for independence in Edinburgh on Monday where he met business leaders who back the breakaway campaign.

He predicted Scotland would vote for independence and that the next time Cameron visited would be to discuss the details of the 5-million strong population’s divorce settlement from the United Kingdom.

“The next time he comes to Scotland it will not be to love-bomb or engage in desperate last-minute scaremongering,” Salmond said in a statement. “It will be to engage in serious post-referendum talks.”

Independence supporters say it is time for Scotland to choose its own leaders and rule itself, free of control from London, and politicians, they say ignore their views and needs.

Cameron is likely to repeat the anti-independence “Better Together” campaign’s core message: that by staying in the United Kingdom, Scotland can take advantage of the benefits of belonging to a larger, more influential entity while enjoying an ever-increasing measure of autonomy.

“No” campaigners say Scotland is more secure and prosperous as part of the United Kingdom, and the end of the union would destroy three centuries of bonds and shared history as well as bring in economic and financial hardship.

Cameron’s visit comes after David Beckham, the retired footballer, added his name to a petition of English celebrities who say they want the Scots to stay.

The celebrity group, “Let’s Stay Together”, is organising a public rally on Monday evening in London’s Trafalgar Square.

It was the pro-independence camp’s turn on Sunday night when a host of Scottish rock stars including the band Franz Ferdinand and Mogwai played a concert in Edinburgh.

Singer Amy McDonald told the audience: “People fight and die for this [independence], and all we have to do is put a little cross in a box. Scotland, you know what to do.”

Opinion polls indicate the vote is hard to call.

Out of four recent polls, three showed those in favour of maintaining the union had a lead of between 2 and 8 percentage points. But an ICM poll conducted over the Internet showed supporters of independence in the lead with 54 per cent and unionists on 46 per cent.

More than 4 million Scots as well as English and foreign residents, from the Highlands and Islands to Glasgow’s gritty inner city estates, are eligible to vote.

The question on the ballot paper will ask simply: “Should Scotland be an independent country?

GENEVA — More than 700 people fleeing Africa and the Middle East may have drowned in the latest shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, bringing the death toll this year to almost 3,000, the International Organisation for Migration said on Monday.

In the worst incident, as many as 500 migrants are believed to have died after traffickers rammed their ship off Malta’s coast last week, an event that only came to light this weekend in testimony from two of the nine survivors.

The survivors said the traffickers ordered the migrants to change vessels in the middle of the Mediterranean. The migrants refused, leading to a confrontation that ended when traffickers rammed the ship carrying the migrants, IOM spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told Reuters in Geneva.

“Some 500 people were on board — Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese. They were trying to reach Europe,” Berthiaume said.

“That means that 700 people perished at sea these last days in the Mediterranean, the deadliest incidents in the space of a few days,” she said.

The vessel had set off on Saturday, September 6 from Damiette, Egypt, and sank off Malta’s coast on September 10th, she said. The UN refugee agency also learned of the shipwreck, but said its information was the wreck occurred on Friday.

“In all, nine people survived and were picked up boats,” Berthiaume said. IOM officials interviewed two Palestinian survivors who were taken to Sicily, Italy, while other survivors were taken to Malta and to Crete, Greece, Berthiaume said.

Four days later, another ship packed with up to 250 African emigrants sank off the Libyan coast, and most of them are feared dead, a spokesman for the Libyan navy said late on Sunday. Some 26 people survived.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR said the situation in the Mediterranean was unclear and it was trying to get confirmation of five shipwrecks in all. “At least 500 people have died or are missing in the last three days”, UNHCR spokesman Francis Markus said in an e-mail.

“It was without any doubt the deadliest weekend ever in the Mediterranean,” Carlotta Sami of the UNHCR said.

Some 130,000 people have arrived in Europe by sea so far this year, compared with 60,000 last year, according to the UNHCR. Italy has received more than 118,000, most of them rescued at sea under its naval operation Mare Nostrum.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres and UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie visited the naval rescue headquarters in Malta on Sunday, meeting survivors, the agency said in a statement issued on Monday.

“Amidst concerns about the sustainability of the Italian Mare Nostrum operation, they also called for increased efforts by European nations to contribute to rescue efforts and reduce deaths at sea,” the UNHCR said.

Half of those arriving in Europe by boat are refugees from Syria and Eritrea, according to the agency.

“We all need to wake up to the scale of this crisis. There is a direct link between the conflicts in Syria and elsewhere and the rise in deaths at sea in the Mediterranean. We have to understand what drives people to take the fearful step of risking their children’s lives on crowded, unsafe vessels; it is the overwhelming desire to find refuge,” Jolie said.

“It is also part of a bigger problem — the soaring numbers of people displaced by conflicts around the world today, which now stands at over 51 million. Unless we address the root causes of these conflicts, the numbers of refugees dying or unable to find protection will continue to rise,” she said.

GLASGOW — Campaigners for and against Scottish independence scrambled for votes on Sunday ahead of a historic referendum, as a religious leader prayed for harmony after polls showed Scots were almost evenly split.

The Church of Scotland’s moderator John Chalmers called for Scots to “live in harmony with one another” whatever the result and hailed the feverish run-up to Thursday’s vote as “a wonderful democratic concerto”.

“All of those who will vote ‘Yes’ and all of those who will vote ‘No’ need to remember that we belong together in the same Scotland,” he told worshippers at St Mary’s Episcopal Church in Edinburgh in a sermon broadcast on BBC radio nationwide.

“We cannot afford to lose the momentum and interest in civic life which this campaign has generated,” said Chalmers, moderator of the general assembly of the church, the largest religious group in Scotland.

The pro-union camp has been far ahead in the polls for many months, but the difference has narrowed in recent weeks and a raft of surveys over the weekend indicated that Thursday’s vote could go either way.

A Survation poll on Saturday showed the “No” camp at 47 per cent and the “Yes” at 40.8 per cent, with 9 per cent undecided and 3.2 per cent unwilling to say.

An Opinium survey for Sunday’s Observer newspaper put “No” at 47.7 per cent and “Yes” at 42.3 per cent, with 10 per cent not voting or not sure if they would.

An ICM online poll for the Sunday Telegraph placed the pro-independence campaign at 49 per cent and the pro-UK at 42 per cent with 9 per cent undecided, but a senior pollster warned the sample size was too small.

“The polls show that the referendum is on a knife-edge. There is everything to play for,” said Blair Jenkins, chief executive of the “Yes Scotland” campaign.

Both sides are scrambling to win over the undecided voters who could hold the balance in the vote.

Pro-independence First Minister Alex Salmond continued a tour of Scotland’s main cities, while his opponent Alistair Darling, a former British finance minister, was due to meet financial industry workers in Edinburgh.

The “Better Together” campaign has warned of a possible negative economic impact of a pro-independence vote.

The pound has fallen on the financial markets as the polls have narrowed and the shares of Scottish businesses have also lost value on the stock exchange.

Britain’s main political parties have promised to grant Scotland more powers in the event of a “No” vote, arguing this would be the best of both worlds for Scots.

But “Yes Scotland” supporters argue that living standards would improve if Scotland became an independent country and that businesses would benefit from being closer to decision making.

A key battleground for the two camps has been Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city.

At St Andrew’s Catholic Cathedral, 67-year-old volunteer Tony Maddon said he was opposed.

“Myself and my wife are both firm ‘No’ voters. We’ve already voted by postal vote. We’re British!” he said.

“I think we’re better off together. Small things don’t normally go very far in the world,” the pensioner added.

As he handed out the mass programme, Tom Grady, 69, said he was still undecided.

“There’s been a lot of debate among my friends. It’s the first thing anyone talks about,” he said.

But at Celtic Park football stadium during a match on Saturday between Glasgow Celtic and Aberdeen, Danny McGee said he had made up his mind for separation.

“Without a shadow of a doubt the working class is for this. We feel we’re up against corporate UK,” the 28-year-old Celtic supporter said at half-time.

DONETSK, Ukraine — Heavy fighting erupted around the rebel stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, piling further pressure on a precarious nine-day-old truce between the government and separatist fighters.

Large clouds of thick black smoke billowed over the industrial city as the boom of sustained shelling and the rattle of automatic gunfire rang out throughout the day, AFP reporters witnessed.

Donetsk council said there had been civilian casualties and described the situation in the city as “critical” but gave no further information.

Kiev accused the rebels of jeopardising the truce by intensifying their attacks on government positions in eastern Ukraine, the scene of five months of deadly combat.

Sunday’s fighting appeared to be concentrated near Donetsk Airport where the Ukrainian military said it had driven back an assault by insurgent fighters on Friday.

AFP journalists were forced to duck for cover on the roof of a building near the airport when they became caught up in the gunfire.

“The terrorist actions are threatening the realisation of the Ukrainian president’s peace plan,” said security spokesperson Volodymyr Polyovy.

He also took aim at comments by two rebel leaders who both signed the 12-point truce deal in Minsk on September 5, but who declared on Sunday they were mere “observers” at the talks.

The ceasefire is seen as a first step in efforts to draw up a longer term peace deal to end a conflict that has cost more than 2,700 lives and set off the worst crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War.

President Petro Poroshenko has pledged to offer the eastern regions that form the economic backbone of Ukraine some limited self-rule, although the separatists say they want nothing less than full independence.

Rebels and government forces also Sunday swapped dozens of captives in the latest exchange agreed to the accord.

But the insurgents said Kiev’s forces were still firing at them.

“From our side, nobody is shooting but they are breaking the rules, everybody in the world knows it,” said a rebel commander defending a checkpoint near a village south of Donetsk.

The simmering crisis has exposed layers of mistrust between the West and Moscow, and between the largely Russian-speaking populations in the east of Ukraine and the pro-Western leaders in Kiev.

The truce halted a rebel counter-surge across the southeast last month with the alleged support of Russian paratroopers and heavy weaponry that turned the tide of the war against Ukrainian forces.

NATO and Kiev say at least 1,000 Russian soldiers and possibly many more remain on Ukrainian soil although the Kremlin denies this.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk accused Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday of seeking to “eliminate” Ukraine as an independent country with the goal of resurrecting the Soviet Union.

The West, deeply alarmed at Putin’s less predictable and more aggressive actions, is seeking to isolate the strongman and pledged greater support for the government in Kiev.

Poroshenko heads to Washington this week to meet President Barack Obama, seeking to secure a “special status” with the United States as he steers Ukraine further out of Russia’s orbit.

Obama has rejected direct military involvement but unveiled tougher economic sanctions on Moscow that — together with similar EU measures — effectively lock Russia out of Western capital markets and hamstring its crucial oil industry.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Washington of trying to use the crisis to “break economic ties between the EU and Russia”.

The punitive measures and an accompanying East-West trade war have left Russia’s economy facing possible recession but have seemingly failed to alter Putin’s course.

Russia on Saturday sent a 220-truck convoy it said was carrying aid to the residents of rebel-held Lugansk, who have been struggling without water and power for weeks.

Ukraine — which did not give permission for the convoy to cross — had expressed fears the trucks may be carrying supplies for insurgents and bitterly protested a similar delivery last month.

On the domestic front, cracks emerged in Poroshenko’s administration when a deputy foreign minister quit over a delay in the implementation of an EU trade deal, apparently under Russian pressure.

The deal — part of a broader association agreement to be ratified on Tuesday — was meant to revive Ukraine’s economy by lifting EU trade barriers, but Russia said it feared it would see its own market flooded with cheaper EU goods.

The pro-Russian Regions Party that ruled Ukraine under ousted president Viktor Yanukovych also announced Sunday it would boycott the October 26 parliamentary ballot and form an “opposition government” designed to fight Kiev’s westward course.

LUHANSK, Ukraine — A convoy of more than 200 white trucks crossed the Russian border to deliver humanitarian aid to a battered Ukrainian city on Saturday, a move made without Kiev's consent yet met with silence by Ukraine's top leaders.

"Early in the morning, we entered Ukraine to bring aid to Luhansk," said Yury Stepanov, a Russian who was overseeing the convoy. "We came in around 215 vehicles," he added, as workers unloaded boxes into a local warehouse.

The much-needed aid arrived as fighting flared again between pro-Russian rebels and government forces, further imperilling an already fragile ceasefire in the region.

On Saturday, Ukraine's military operation in the east said it had repelled a rebel attack on the government-held airport of Donetsk, which came under artillery fire from rebel positions late on Friday. Ukrainian authorities also admitted for the first time since the ceasefire started last week that they have inflicted casualties on the rebel side.

Continuous rocket fire could be heard overnight in Donetsk. A statement on the city council website said that shells hit residential buildings near the airport, although no casualties were reported. A column of three Grad rocket launchers — all its rockets still in place — was seen moving freely through the rebel-held city on Saturday morning.

In the other regional capital of Luhansk, one of the worst-hit cities where tens of thousands have been without water, electricity, or phone connections for weeks, the streets were calm as Russian drivers unloaded aid packages into local warehouses.

Stepanov said the goods consisted mainly of foodstuffs — rice, sugar, and canned fish and beef — but also included medicine, technical equipment and clothes. The deliveries were in closed boxes, small enough to be easily carried by one person, but rice was seen spilling from a broken bag.

Inside the warehouse, an Associated Press journalist saw water bottles carrying the logo of Russia's LDPR Party, led by virulent nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

While dozens of local workers unloaded boxes, several carloads of armed militiamen in camouflage arrived to inspect the scene.

Stepanov said his team was responsible only for delivery and distribution will be handled by local authorities — which for now means the separatist leaders of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic.

Gennady Tsepkalo, a senior separatist official, said retirees, hospital patients and schoolchildren would be priorities for aid. He said the food would not be used to feed rebel fighters.

"The militia will feed itself separately. This is for the residents of the Luhansk People's Republic," Tsepkalo said.

Luhansk shows deep scars of an unsuccessful, weeks-long shelling campaign by government troops. The government had regained growing swathes of territory from the separatists over several weeks, but a major rebel counteroffensive beginning in late August halted and reversed that trend.

Luhansk itself was at one point almost totally surrounded by government troops. Those forces have since abandoned many of their former positions.

As the Russian trucks drove back along the border toward Ukraine, rebel fighters along the road punched the air and waved in greeting.

At the border point of Izvarine, a line of cars that stretched for several kilometres was filled with refugees who had fled to Russia but briefly returned during the cease-fire to grab all the household items they could.

An August agreement between Russia, Ukraine and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) allowed Moscow to bring aid to the region, as long as all vehicles were inspected by Ukrainian border guards and escorted by the ICRC. After two weeks of waiting at the border for all sides to agree, Russia sent the cargo across the border without Kiev's consent.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's observer mission to the Russian-Ukrainian border said Saturday that 220 trucks cross into Ukraine, none of which were inspected by the Ukrainian side or accompanied by the ICRC.

"We were not officially notified of an agreement between Moscow and Kiev to ship the cargo," Galina Balzamova, a representative of the ICRC's Moscow office, said Saturday.

The Russian emergency ministry, which coordinated previous humanitarian aid deliveries to Ukraine, could not be reached for comment.

Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesperson for Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, told journalists Saturday that Russia's move into Ukrainian territory was "illegal".

But the silence of Ukraine's top leaders marked a dramatic shift in Kiev. 

In August, when Russia sent a convoy of trucks over the border without waiting for Kiev's approval or oversight from the ICRC, Ukrainian officials quickly condemned what they called an invasion of Ukraine. On Saturday, no top Ukrainian leader mentioned Russia's latest delivery at all.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has been at pains to prove that the cease-fire has yielded improvements on the ground in east Ukraine. 

On Friday, he lauded the agreement, which has been riddled by violations since it was imposed last week, as a "fragile but efficient peace process". Allowing more humanitarian aid into the region was one component of the 12-point deal.