World

BRUSSELS — European leaders Saturday named Polish Premier Donald Tusk the next EU president and Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini to head its diplomatic service as the bloc faces a series of challenges topped by Ukraine.

Tusk, who speaks only halting English and no French, is the first Eastern European to hold such a senior post in the EU and is known as a tough critic of the Kremlin, especially over the Ukraine crisis.

"The suspense is up, the new EU leadership team is complete," said current EU President Herman Van Rompuy moments after the announcement was made.

Van Rompuy said the new team faced three major challenges: The stagnating European economy, the crisis in Ukraine which he called "the gravest threat to continental security since the Cold War", and Britain's place in the EU.

"I come to Brussels from a country that deeply believes in the significance of Europe," the centre-right Tusk told a news conference with Van Rompuy and Mogherini.

He insisted that "no reasonable person can imagine the EU without the UK" and pledged to do everything possible to meet London's demands for reform.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "delighted" by Tusk's appointment and by his comments.

Tusk will take office on December 1 while Mogherini, if confirmed by the European Parliament, will start her new job on November 1.

Strongly backed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the 57-year-old Tusk is a pro-European free marketeer with roots in Poland's Solidarity anti-Soviet trade union who has been prime minister since 2007.

Merkel said Tusk "faced big challenges" and lauded him as "a qualified, committed and passionate European, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 25 years after the end of the Cold War”.

He will also head up summits of the countries that use the euro, despite years of questioning the wisdom of eurozone bailouts as prime minister and Poland not being a member of the single currency.

'Polish my English' 

Tusk denied his poor command of foreign languages would handicap him as EU president, a job that requires a deft touch to find compromise amid conflicting positions and prepare European leaders for often delicate summits.

"Don't worry, I will 'Polish' my English and be 100 per cent ready on December 1," Tusk said in English, punning on the word for his nationality and showing a command of the language one journalist openly questioned at the press conference.

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said the choice of the next EU president was "a recognition of Poland's achievement and its place in Europe".

Mogherini, Italy's 41-year-old foreign minister, has long been a favourite to replace Catherine Ashton as head of the EU's foreign service, hailed by her supporters as a new, younger face for Europe.

"I hope I can join the new energy of the new European generation that is there not only among the EU citizens but also in the EU political leadership," Mogherini said.

With leaders unnerved by Russia's latest actions in Ukraine, the nomination of Tusk to replace Belgium's Van Rompuy could send a message of resolve to Moscow as EU leaders also mull fresh sanctions.

The White House congratulated Tusk and Mogherini.

"As we advance security and prosperity around the world, the United States has no more important partner than Europe," the White House statement read.

Mogherini's candidacy initially faced fierce resistance, with Eastern European countries — and reportedly British officials — criticising her as both inexperienced and too soft on Russia.

She was initially sidelined at a first EU summit in July. But six weeks later, and after Italy staunchly backed more sanctions against Russia, Mogherini, who speaks fluent English and French, was put in a stronger position.

"I know the challenges are huge, especially in these times of crisis," Mogherini said.

"All around Europe we have crisis."

Hours before the summit, left-of-centre EU leaders meeting in Paris formally backed her as the bloc's new foreign policy chief.

"I have high hopes that she will be chosen," said French President Francois Hollande, eager to see a socialist and southern European in a top role.

MOSCOW/MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Sunday for immediate talks on "statehood" for southern and eastern Ukraine, although his spokesman said this did not mean Moscow now endorsed rebel calls for independence for territory they have seized.

The Kremlin leader's remarks, which follow a feisty public appearance in which he compared the Kiev government to Nazis and warned the West not to "mess with us", came with Europe and the United States preparing new sanctions to halt what they say is direct Russian military involvement in the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian troops and local residents were reinforcing the port of Mariupol on Sunday, the next big city in the path of pro-Russian fighters who pushed back government forces along the Azov Sea this past week in an offensive on a new front.

Ukraine and Russia swapped soldiers who had entered each other's territory near the battlefield, where Kiev says Moscow's forces have come to the aid of pro-Russian insurgents, tipping the balance on the battlefield in the rebels' favour.

Talks should be held immediately "and not just on technical issues but on the political organisation of society and statehood in southeastern Ukraine," Putin said in an interview with Channel 1 state television, his hair tousled by wind on the shore of a lake.

Moscow, for its part, he said, could not stand aside while people were being shot "almost at point blank".

Putin's use of the word "statehood" was interpreted in Western media as implying backing for the rebel demand of independence, something Moscow has so far stopped short of publicly endorsing.

However, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was no new endorsement from Moscow for rebel independence. Asked if "New Russia", a term pro-Moscow rebels use for their territory, should still be part of Ukraine, Peskov said: "Of course."

"Only Ukraine can reach an agreement with New Russia, taking into account the interests of New Russia, and this is the only way to reach a political settlement."

Rebels have rallied behind the term "New Russia" since Putin first used it in a public appearance in April. Putin called it a tsarist-era term for land that now forms southern and eastern Ukraine. Ukrainians consider the term deeply offensive and say it reveals Moscow's imperial designs on their territory.

Moscow has long called for Kiev to hold direct political talks with the rebels. Kiev says it is willing to have talks on more rights for the south and east, but will not talk directly to armed fighters it describes as "international terrorists" and Russian puppets that can only be reined in by Moscow.

The deputy leader of the rebel Donetsk People's Republic, Andrei Prugin, said he was due to participate in talks in the Belarus capital Minsk on Monday. Past talks by a so-called "contact group" involving Moscow, Kiev and rebels have covered technical issues like access to the crash site of a Malaysian airliner shot down in July, but not political questions.

New advance

The past week has seen Ukrainian forces flee in the path of a new rebel advance, drawing concern from Ukraine's Western allies, who say armoured columns of Russian troops came to the aid of a rebellion that would otherwise have been near collapse.

European Union leaders agreed on Saturday to draw up new economic sanctions against Moscow, a move hailed by the United States, which is planning tighter sanctions of its own and wants to act jointly with Europe.

Some residents of Mariupol have taken to the streets of the port to show support for the Ukrainian government as pro-Russian forces gain ground. Many others have fled from the prospect of an all-out assault on the city of nearly 500,000 people.

"We are proud to be from this city and we are ready to defend it from the occupiers," said Alexandra, 28, a post office clerk wearing a ribbon in blue and yellow Ukrainian colours.

"We will dig trenches. We will throw petrol bombs at them, the occupiers," she said. "I believe our army and our [volunteer] battalions will protect us."

Ihor, 42, and his wife Lena, 40, were packing their car to flee with their five-year-old daughter. They had sheltered in Mariupol after battle came to their home city Donetsk in July.

"We will not wait for another repetition of war. We did nothing to provoke it and we do not want to be a part of it," said Lena.

Troop swap

The swap of soldiers overnight at the frontier was a rare gesture to ease tension, but Kiev and Moscow have given starkly opposing accounts of how their troops came to be on each other's territory. A Russian paratroop commander said an unspecified number of Russian paratroops were swapped for 63 Ukrainian soldiers. Kiev said the Russian soldiers numbered nine.

Kiev and its allies in Europe and the United States say the new rebel offensive has been backed by more than 1,000 Russian troops fighting openly to support the insurgents. The rebels themselves say thousands of Russian troops have fought on their behalf while "on leave".

Reuters journalists on the Russian side of the border have seen Russian troops showing signs of having returned from battle, with their insignia removed or rubbed out.

Despite the evidence, Moscow denies its troops are fighting in Ukraine and says a small party of soldiers crossed the border by accident. Russian Major General Alexei Ragozin said the paratroops were handed back after "very difficult" negotiations.

"I consider it unacceptable that our servicemen were detained by the Ukrainian side for so many days. Our lads are upset about everything that happened. They will all receive the necessary psychological and other kinds of help. The lads will all be OK."

Ragozin said Russia, by contrast, had promptly returned hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who at various times have crossed the border when squeezed by rebel forces. He said the latest group of 63 had entered Russia on Wednesday.

Kiev has in the past said some of its soldiers crossed into Russia to escape from fighting on the Ukrainian side of the frontier, behaviour that contrasts with that of the Russians it says crossed the border to wage war in Ukraine. Ukraine's military spokesman has mocked the idea that the Russians had "got lost like Little Red Riding Hood in the forest".

Sanctions

The United States and European Union have gradually tightened economic sanctions against Russia, first imposed after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March following the ousting of Kiev's pro-Russian president by protesters.

So far, however, the measures have done little to deter Putin, who gave a typically defiant public appearance on Friday in which he described Russians and Ukrainians as "practically one people" and compared Kiev's attempts to recapture rebellious cities with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

Russia is a strong nuclear power, and foreigners should understand that "it's best not to mess with us", he said.

Moscow has responded to sanctions by banning the import of most Western foodstuffs, stripping French cheese and Polish apples from store shelves and shutting down McDonalds restaurants. The moves reinforce a sense among Russians that they are isolated from a hostile world, as in Cold War days.

Agreeing the Western sanctions has been tricky, not least because the 28-member European Union must take decisions by consensus and many of its countries depend on Russian energy resources.

Nevertheless, the EU has gone further than many had predicted, agreeing to impose sanctions on Russia's financial and oil industries last month after a Malaysian airliner was shot down over rebel territory, killing nearly 300 people, most of them Dutch.

EU leaders agreed on Saturday to ask the executive European Commission to draw up more sanctions measures, which could be adopted in coming days.

The White House praised the move to "show strong support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity". But in a sign of the difficulty in achieving an EU consensus, the leader of tiny Slovakia said sanctions had failed so far and threatened to veto any new ones that damaged his country's national interest.

DAKAR — The World Food Programme (WFP) needs to raise $70 million to feed 1.3 million people at risk from shortages in Ebola-quarantined areas in West Africa, with the agency's resources already stretched by several major humanitarian crises, its regional director said.

WFP's West Africa Director Denise Brown said the organisation was currently providing food for around 150,000 people in Ebola-striken nations but needed to rapidly scale that up as the worst ever epidemic of the virus advanced.

Senegal on Friday became the fifth country to confirm it had been touched by the outbreak that has infected more than 3,000 people — killing some 1,550 of them — since it was detected in March. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday the outbreak could infect a total of 20,000 people before it ends.

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have pledged to impose a “cordon sanitaire” on the most affected communities in their joint border region, restricting travel to and from the areas and limiting their access to food supplies.

"We need $70 million. That's for 1.3 million people for three months," Brown told Reuters late on Friday. "We've agreed this morning...that we need to extend that because WHO is already talking about 6-9 months before this is contained."

Brown said the WFP would look from donations from major donors like the United States, the European Union, the World Bank and Japan, as well as from non-traditional benefactors such as Arab states.

She warned, however, that the agency's resources were already thinly stretched by major humanitarian crises in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and Central African Republic.

"I don't think the world has ever seen so many concurrent crisis on such a huge scale. The humanitarian community is stretched beyond belief," she said.

Brown said WFP started food distribution in Guinea around four months ago, and more recently in Liberia and Sierra Leone, mostly delivering food to isolation wards in hospitals before gradually increasing the scope of the mission.

Travel restrictions imposed by neighbouring African countries, notably Senegal — a regional hub for the humanitarian sector — had made it more difficult to get staff and supplies into the affected region, Brown said.

The operation was also made more challenging by precautions to stop the disease spreading and staff becoming infected.

"We don't want to go in and do a distribution for 10,000 people. We want small groups of people, which is going to be very hard for us to manage," Brown said. "Yes, it probably makes us a bit slower but we need to get this right."

The area of Liberia hardest-hit around the northern Lofa county include some of its main food producing regions and the quarantine imposed on this area has raised fears that supplies to the rest of the country will be restricted.

Brown said that prices for rice and cassava at one of the main markets in the capital Monrovia had already risen by around 30 per cent and there were reports that farmers had not been able to plant their crops because of contagion fears, suggesting shortages were likely to worsen.

KIEV/BRUSSELS — Ukraine said Russian tanks had flattened a small border town and pro-Russian rebels had made fresh gains in its east, as EU leaders signalled on Saturday they would threaten more sanctions against Moscow over the crisis.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, attending an EU summit in Brussels, said he was hoping for progress in finding a political solution, but told journalists there were now thousands of foreign troops in his country.

Russia has repeatedly dismissed accusations from Kiev and Western powers that it has sent soldiers into its neighbour, or supported pro-Russian rebels fighting a five-month-old separatist war in Ukraine's east.

But Ukraine military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told journalists in Kiev that Russian tanks had entered the small Ukrainian town of Novosvitlivka on the border with Russia and fired on every house.

"We have information that virtually every house has been destroyed," Lysenko added, without giving details on when the reported attack took place. Ukraine's daily military briefings typically cover the previous 24 hours.

Lysenko said the rebels had made new gains just east of the border city of Luhansk, one of the rebels' main strongholds, after opening up a new front in another area last week.

"Direct military aggression by the Russian Federation in the east of Ukraine is continuing. The Russians are continuing to send military equipment and 'mercenaries'," Ukraine's defence and security council said in a separate Twitter post.

Kiev and Western countries say recent rebel gains were the result of the arrival of armoured columns of Russian troops, sent by Russian President Vladimir Putin to prop up a separatist rebellion that would otherwise have been near collapse.

There was no immediate fresh comment from Russia on Saturday. Putin on Friday compared Kiev's drive to regain control of its rebellious eastern cities to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II.

‘No time to waste’

According to a draft statement, EU leaders at Saturday's Brussels summit were set to ask the European Commission and the EU's diplomatic service "to urgently undertake preparatory work" on further sanctions that could be implemented if necessary.

French President Francois Hollande stressed that a failure by Russia to reverse a flow of weapons and troops into eastern Ukraine would force the bloc to impose new economic measures.

"Are we going to let the situation worsen, until it leads to war?" Hollande said at a news conference. "Because that's the risk today. There is no time to waste."

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU was prepared to toughen sanctions against Russia but also that it wanted a political deal to end the confrontation.

"We are ready to take very strong and clear measures but we are keeping our doors open to a political solution," Barroso said at a news conference with Ukraine's president.

Poroshenko said he expected to see progress toward peace soon, without going into details.

Shots fired

The crisis started when Ukraine's Moscow-backed president was ousted by street protests in February after he ditched a pact with the EU that would have moved the ex-Soviet republic firmly towards Europe and away from Russia.

Russia denounced the pro-Western leadership that took over as "a fascist junta" and went on to annex Ukraine's Crimea peninsula. Pro-Russian separatists then rebelled in Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking east in April, setting up “people's republics” and declaring they wanted to join Russia.

A senior UN human rights official said on Friday nearly 2,600 civilians, Ukrainian government forces and rebels had been killed in a conflict which has led to the biggest Russia-West crisis since the Cold War.

In Kiev, Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said a group of pro-Ukrainian fighters had broken out of encirclement by pro-Russian rebels near Donetsk early on Saturday, though other reports suggested many remained trapped.

Defence Minister Valery Heletey also ordered a clamp-down on information coming out of Ilovaysk, a town to the east of Donetsk.

Indicating government forces were being pulled back from the area, Heletey said on his Facebook page: "As soon as the danger for Ukrainian units has passed, all open information for the current period relating to the withdrawal of forces from Ilovaysk will be published."

Last week pro-Russian rebels opened a new front in a separate, coastal territory along the Sea of Azov and pushed Ukrainian troops out of the town of Novoazovsk. They are now threatening the strategic port city of Mariupol.

Several shots were fired on Saturday at a car carrying Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic, but he escaped unscathed, another separatist leader, Sergei Kavtaradze, told Reuters.

"Zakharchenko wasn't hurt. His driver was wounded and is being operated on," Kavtaradze said, adding that an operation was under way to catch whoever had fired the shots.

NOVOAZOVSK, Ukraine — Two columns of tanks and military vehicles rolled into southeastern Ukraine from Russia on Thursday after Grad missiles were fired at a border post and Ukraine's overmatched border guards fled, a top Ukrainian official said.

Echoing the comments by Ukraine's Col. Andriy Lysenko, a top NATO official said at least 1,000 Russian troops have poured into Ukraine with sophisticated equipment, leaving no doubt that the Russian military had invaded southeastern Ukraine.

"The hand from behind is becoming more and more overt now," Brig. Gen. Nico Tak said at NATO's military headquarters, adding that Russia's ultimate aim was to stave off defeat for the separatists and turn eastern Ukraine into a "frozen conflict" that would destabilise the country indefinitely.

"An invasion is an invasion," tweeted the Lithuanian ambassador to the UN, Raimonda Murmokaite, who requested that the Security Council hold an emergency meeting on Ukraine on Thursday afternoon.

"Russian forces have entered Ukraine," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko declared Thursday, cancelling a foreign trip and calling an emergency meeting of his security council. "Today the president's place is in Kiev."

Poroshenko urged his citizens to resist giving into panic.

"Destabilisation of the situation and panic, this is as much of a weapon of the enemy as tanks," Poroshenko told the security council.

As Poroshenko spoke, the strategic southeastern town of Novoazovsk appeared firmly under the control of separatists and their Russian backers, a new, third front in the war in eastern Ukraine between the separatists and Poroshenko’s government in Kiev.

Lysenko said the missiles from Russia were fired at Ukrainian positions in the southeast about 11am and an hour and a half later, two columns, including tanks and other fighting vehicles, began an attack. They entered Ukraine from Veselo-Voznesenka and Maximovo in the Rostov region of Russia.

Russian stock markets dived as Switzerland joined the European Union in imposing restrictions on Russian state banks and fears grew that the US and EU could impose further sanctions on Russian businesses and individuals in response to the military escalation. Russia’s MICEX index dropped nearly 2 per cent on Thursday, and major Russian state banks VTB and Sberbank dropped more than 4 per cent.

“Over the past two weeks we have noted a significant escalation in both the level and sophistication of Russia’s military interference in Ukraine,” Tak said in Casteau, Belgium. “Russia is reinforcing and resupplying separatist forces in a blatant attempt to change the momentum of the fighting, which is currently favouring the Ukrainian military.”

He said the 1,000 Russian troops was a conservative estimate and said another 20,000 Russian troops were right over the Russian border.

NATO also produced satellite images to provide what it called additional evidence that Russian combat soldiers, equipped with sophisticated heavy weaponry, are operating inside Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

“This is highly sophisticated weaponry that requires well-trained crews, well-trained command and control elements, and it is extremely unlikely that this sort of equipment is used by volunteers,” Tak said.

Russia has described the Russian citizens fighting with the separatists as volunteers.

Tak said the satellite images were only “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of the overall scope of Russian troop and weapons movements.

“NATO also has detected large quantities of advanced weapons, including air defence systems, artillery, tanks and armoured personnel carriers being transferred to separatist forces in eastern Ukraine,” he said. “The presence of these weapons along with substantial numbers of Russian combat troops inside Ukraine make the situation increasingly grave,” Tak said.

The leader of the insurgency, Alexander Zakharchenko, said in an interview on Russian state television Thursday that 3,000 to 4,000 Russians have fought on the separatist side since the armed conflict began in April.

The US government also has accused Russia of orchestrating the rebel campaign and sending in tanks, rocket launchers and armoured vehicles.

“These incursions indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway in Donetsk and Luhansk,” US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. She voiced concern about overnight deliveries of materiel in southeast Ukraine near Novoazovsk and said Russia was being dishonest about its actions, even to its own people.

Russian forces, she said, are being sent about 50 kilometres inside Ukraine, without them or their families knowing where they are going. She cited reports of burials in Russia for those who have died in Ukraine and wounded Russian soldiers being treated in a St. Petersburg hospital.

On Thursday morning, an Associated Press journalist saw rebel checkpoints at the outskirts of Novoazovsk and was told he could not enter. One of the rebels said there was no fighting in the town.

Novoazovsk, which lies along the road connecting Russia to the Russia-annexed Crimean Peninsula, had come under shelling for three days, with the rebels entering it on Wednesday. This area had previously escaped the fighting that has engulfed areas to the north, and the only way rebels could have reached the southeast was by coming through Russia.

GENEVA — The Ebola outbreak in West Africa eventually could exceed 20,000 cases, more than six times as many as are now known, the World Health Organisation said Thursday.

A new plan released by the UN health agency to stop Ebola also assumes that the actual number of cases in many hard-hit areas may be two to four times higher than currently reported. If that's accurate, it suggests there could be up to 12,000 cases already.

Currently, about half of the people infected with Ebola have died, so in the worst case scenario outlined by the WHO, the death toll could reach 10,000.

"This far outstrips any historic Ebola outbreak in numbers. The largest outbreak in the past was about 400 cases," Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO's assistant director general for emergency operations, told reporters.

He said the agency does not necessarily expect 20,000 cases, but a system must be put in place to handle a massive increase in the numbers.

Separately Thursday, the US National Institutes of Health announced it will start testing an experimental Ebola vaccine in humans next week. The vaccine was developed by the US government and GlaxoSmithKline and the preliminary trial will test the shot in healthy US adults in Maryland. At the same time, British experts will test the same vaccine in healthy people in the UK, Gambia and Mali.

The vaccine trial was accelerated in response to the outbreak. Preliminary results to determine if the vaccine is safe could be available within months.

The outbreak is posing a unique challenge, Aylward said, because there are multiple hot spots in several countries, including in densely populated urban areas. Previous outbreaks had happened in a single, remote area.

In new figures, the agency said 1,552 people have died from the virus from among the 3,069 cases reported so far in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria. More than 40 per cent of the cases have been identified in the last three weeks, the UN health agency said, adding that "the outbreak continues to accelerate”.

The new plan for handling the outbreak aims to stop Ebola transmission in affected countries within six to nine months and prevent it from spreading internationally.

The plan calls for $489 million over the next nine months and requires 750 international workers and 12,000 national workers.

The goal is to take "the heat out of this outbreak" within three months, he said.

The next goal, Aylward said, is to be able to stop transmission within eight weeks of a new case being confirmed anywhere.

The third major goal is to increase the preparedness for dealing with Ebola in all nations that share borders with affected countries or have major transportation hubs, he said.

Doctors Without Borders, which has criticised the WHO and the international community, in general, for responding too slowly to the crisis, warned that the plan "should not give a false sense of hope”.

"As an international public health emergency, states with the capacity to help have the responsibility to mobilise resources to the affected countries, rather than watching from the sidelines with a naive hope that the situation will improve," Brice de le Vingne, the group's director of operations, said in a statement.

Air France on Wednesday cancelled its flights to Sierra Leone; the WHO has urged airlines to lift such restrictions.

"Right now there is a super risk of the response effort being choked off, being restricted, because we simply cannot get enough seats on enough airplanes to get people in and out, and rotating, to get goods and supplies in and out and rotating," he said.

Nigerian authorities, meanwhile, said a man who contracted Ebola after coming into contact with a traveller from Liberia had evaded surveillance and infected a doctor in southern Nigeria who later died.

The doctor is the sixth person to die of the disease in Nigeria and marks the first fatality outside the commercial capital of Lagos, where a Liberian-American man, Patrick Sawyer, arrived in late July.

The World Food Programme says it is preparing to feed 1.3 million people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in the coming months because measures to control an Ebola outbreak have cut off whole communities from markets, pushed up food prices and separated farmers from their fields. Denise Brown, the West Africa regional director for the UN agency, said $70 million is needed immediately to meet those needs.

ANKARA, Turkey — Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the oath office as Turkey's first popularly elected president on Thursday, a position that will keep him in the nation's driving seat for at least another five years.

Erdogan was scheduled to appoint Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu — his designated successor as prime minster and loyal ally — to form a new government in the evening, following ceremonies at the presidential palace.

Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics for a decade and won Turkey's first direct presidential elections on August 10. He has indicated he wants to transform the presidency from a largely ceremonial post into a more powerful position and is expected to hold sway in the running of the country. He intends to exercise the full powers of the presidency, including summoning Cabinet meetings.

Taking the oath in parliament, Erdogan said: "As president I swear on my pride and honour that I will protect the state, its independence, the indivisible unity of the nation... and that I will abide by the constitution, the rule of law, democracy... and the principle of the secular republic."

Later, Erdogan headed to the mausoleum of the nation's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, where he wrote on the visitors' book: "Today, the day the first president elected by the people takes office, is the day Turkey is born from its ashes."

Legislators from Turkey's main opposition party left parliament minutes before Erdogan arrived in protest of the man they accuse of not respecting the country's constitution. A legislator was seen throwing a copy of the constitution towards the parliamentary speaker, complaining that he wasn't allowed to speak.

Erdogan "will pledge allegiance to the constitution but he will lie. I don't want to witness that lie," said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition party's leader, who snubbed the inauguration ceremony.

In a ceremony where he formally took charge of the presidency from his predecessor, Abdullah Gul, Erdogan said that as the first president to be elected by the people — instead of parliament — his tenure would usher in an era of a "new Turkey, a great Turkey".

Working "hand in hand" with Davutoglu, the two would end divisions in Turkey, strive to further improve the economy, carry out democratic reforms and advance the country's bid to join the European Union, Erdogan said.

"Our march towards the EU will continue in a more determined way. Our democratic reforms won't lose speed," Erdogan said.

On Wednesday, Erdogan rejected claims that Davutoglu would merely do his bidding, saying the two would work together.

Erdogan has been a divisive figure. He is adored by supporters after presiding over a decade of relative prosperity. But he is also despised by many for taking an increasing authoritarian tack and is accused of trying to impose his religious and conservative mores on a nation that has secular traditions.

ANKARA — In a farewell speech to supporters of his AK Party, Turkish President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdogan said its mission to reshape the nation would go on after he left party politics and took office as head of state.

Erdogan's supporters see him as a hero, restoring religious values to public life long dominated by the secular ideals of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who founded the modern republic in 1923. Critics, including Western-facing, secular Turks, fear an increasingly authoritarian state.

Erdogan, who is due to be inaugurated as president on Thursday, said today was the birth of a new Turkey.

He dismissed suggestions that a new Cabinet led by incoming prime minister and new AK Party leader Ahmet Davutoglu would be a "caretaker" government and he made clear its priorities would not deviate from the path he had set as premier.

"What is changing today is the form, not the essence. The mission which our party has assumed, the spirit of its cause, its goals and ideals are not changing," Erdogan said in his last speech as leader of the movement he co-founded 13 years ago.

Erdogan forged the AK Party as a coalition of conservative religious Muslims, nationalists and reforming centre-right elements in 2001 in what was later heralded as a potential model for political Islam.

Under the constitution, Erdogan must cut his ties to the party as president and sceptics question how tightly it can hold together without his rigid leadership.

Thousands of AK faithful attended the party congress in Ankara and thousands more watched the heavily choreographed event, which opened with a film charting Erdogan's political career, on large screens under blazing sunshine outside.

Foreign Minister Davutoglu was the only candidate for Erdogan's replacement as party leader, winning with 1,382 votes. The remaining six votes were ruled invalid.

Davutoglu took the podium to say Turkey needed a new constitution with a liberal character to replace a text born of a 1980 military coup. This would introduce the executive presidency Erdogan openly covets.

"Erdogan's legacy is our honour and will be defended to the end," Davutoglu said in his speech.

He promised to keep the party united, press ahead with a Kurdish peace process, and maintain Turkey's efforts towards European Union membership.

Erdogan has made clear he intends to stay politically active and wield greater power than predecessors whose role was largely ceremonial.

"A president's duty is not to obstruct the government but to open the way for it," he said, in an apparent bid to reassure his critics.

Self-confident Turkey

Erdogan said earlier he would ask Davutoglu to form a new government on Thursday and the Cabinet would be announced on Friday.

The current economic team, including Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan and Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek, is expected to remain largely intact, while intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, a close Erdogan confidante, and EU minister Mevlut Cavusoglu are leading contenders for foreign minister.

Erdogan aide Yalcin Akdogan was also expected to take up a position in Cabinet, possibly as a deputy prime minister, while AK deputy chairman, Mustafa Sentop, is seen as a candidate for justice minister, senior officials have said.

Davutoglu's role, besides continuing many of Erdogan's core policies, will also be to deliver success in a parliamentary election next June, according to Hatem Ete, director of the Ankara-based think tank SETA.

A stronger majority would boost the party's chances of changing the constitution and establishing the presidential system Erdogan desires.

"The most important item on his agenda will be to ensure that the AK Party does not lose votes in this time, or better yet, increases its votes," Ete said.

Davutoglu also repeated that fighting the "parallel state", a term senior officials use to describe supporters of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, would remain a priority.

Erdogan's government accuses Gulen's network of followers, who wield influence in the police and judiciary, of infiltrating state institutions and trying to unseat the government with street protests last summer and a corruption scandal which erupted in December.

KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukraine accused Russia of launching a new military incursion across its eastern border on Wednesday, as hopes quickly faded that Tuesday's talks between their two presidents might mark a turning point in a five-month-old crisis.

Accusations of direct Russian support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine have prompted Western governments to impose sanctions on Moscow, despite its vehement denials, and fanned tensions with NATO to levels not seen since the Cold War.

Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said a group of Russian soldiers had crossed the border in armoured infantry carriers and a truck and entered the town of Amvrosiyivka, not far from where Ukraine detained 10 Russian soldiers on Monday.

He said fighting in two other towns, Horlivka and Ilovaysk, had killed about 200 pro-Russian rebels and destroyed tanks and missile systems. Thirteen Ukrainian service personnel had been killed in the past 24 hours and 36 had been wounded.

No comment was immediately available from the Russian defence ministry on the alleged incursion. Russia denies sending weapons and soldiers to help the rebels, and says the men captured on Monday had crossed an unmarked section of the border by mistake.

Late-night talks in the Belarussian capital Minsk had appeared to yield some progress towards ending a war in which more than 2,200 people have been killed, according to the UN — a toll that excludes the 298 who died when a Malaysian airliner was shot down over rebel-held territory in July.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he would work on an urgent “roadmap” towards a ceasefire with the rebels. Russia's Vladimir Putin said it would be for Ukrainians to work out ceasefire terms, but Moscow would "contribute to create a situation of trust".

But Wednesday's new accusations from Ukraine made clear that the poisonous dispute over Russia's role remained unresolved.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said it was hard to tell whether the talks in Minsk marked a breakthrough.

"Perhaps not, but let's hope that this meeting was not an end of some development, but another beginning," he said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said the flow of Russian forces and weapons into Ukraine was a major problem and Moscow must ensure that it stops.

"It's long overdue that this border is properly secured and that all forms of military support for the separatists over this border end. Russia has a big responsibility for that," spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

Trade wars

Fighting in the east erupted in April, a month after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in response to the toppling of a pro-Moscow president in Kiev.

The crisis has prompted the United States and EU to impose sanctions on Russia's finance, oil and defence sectors, and Moscow has hit back by banning most Western food imports. The trade wars threaten to tip Russia into recession and strangle economic recovery in Europe.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was not looking for a further escalation of trade tensions. "We have no interest in a confrontation or in whipping up a spiral of sanctions," he told an audience of students.

The next step would be for a “Contact Group”, comprising representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the rebels and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to meet in Minsk, he said without giving a time frame.

But Ukrainian foreign policy adviser Valery Chaly told reporters in Kiev that Poroshenko's declaration on a ceasefire roadmap did not mean an immediate end to the government's military offensive against the rebels.

"If there are attacks from the terrorists and mercenaries, then our army has the duty to defend the people," he said.

A rebel leader, Oleg Tsaryov, wrote on Facebook that he welcomed the outcome of the Minsk talks, but the separatists would not stop short of full independence for the regions of eastern Ukraine they call Novorossiya (New Russia).

He said he saw "a real breakthrough" in Putin's offer to contribute to the peace process.

But he added: "It must be understood that a genuine settlement of the situation is only possible with the participation of representatives of Novorossiya. We will not allow our fate to be decided behind our back...

"Now we are demanding independence. We don't trust the Ukrainian leadership and don't consider ourselves part of Ukraine. The guarantee of our security is our own armed forces. We will decide our own fate."

Further underlining Kiev's distrust of Moscow, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said his country needed "practical help" and "momentous decisions" from NATO at an alliance summit next month.

He said he knew of Russian plans to halt gas flows this winter to Europe, up to half of which are shipped via Ukraine. Russia's energy minister called the assertion groundless.

Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine in June in a dispute over pricing and debt, but Putin said after Tuesday's talks that he and Poroshenko had agreed to resume discussions.

European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said gas consultations would take place in Moscow on Friday between Russia, Ukraine and the European Union.

FREETOWN/KINSHASA — The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday it had shut a laboratory in Sierra Leone after a health worker there was infected with Ebola, a move that may hamper efforts to boost the global response to the worst ever outbreak of the disease.

At least 1,427 people have died and 2,615 have been infected since the disease was detected deep in the forests of southeastern Guinea in March. A separate outbreak was confirmed in Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday.

The WHO has deployed nearly 400 of its own staff and partner organisations to fight the epidemic of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever, which has struck Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria.

Nigeria's health minister said on Tuesday his country had "thus far contained" the Ebola outbreak, with only one of 13 confirmed cases being treated in isolation.

The WHO said it had withdrawn staff from the laboratory testing for Ebola at Kailahun — one of only two in Sierra Leone — after a Senegalese epidemiologist was infected with Ebola.

"It's a temporary measure to take care of the welfare of our remaining workers," WHO spokesperson Christy Feig said, without specifying how long the measure would last. "After our assessment, they will return."

Feig said she could not assess what impact the withdrawal of WHO staff would have on the fight against Ebola in the Kailahun, the area hardest hit by the disease.

One of the deadliest disease known to man, Ebola is transmitted by contact with body fluids and the current outbreak has killed at least 120 healthcare workers.

The Senegalese medic — the first worker deployed by WHO to be infected — will be evacuated from Sierra Leone in the coming days, Feig said. He is currently being treated at a government hospital in the eastern town of Kenema.

With its resources stretched by the West African outbreak, medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Tuesday it could provide only limited help to tackle Congo's outbreak.

A report from the UN mission in Congo on Tuesday said 13 people there had died from Ebola, including five health workers.

Congo said on Sunday it would quarantine the area around the town of Djera, in the isolated northwestern jungle province of Equateur, where a high number of suspected cases has been reported. It is Congo's seventh outbreak since Ebola was discovered in 1976 in Equateur, near the Ebola river.

"Usually, we would be able to mobilise specialist haemorrhagic fever teams, but we are currently responding to a massive epidemic in West Africa," said Jeroen Beijnberger, MSF medical coordinator in Congo. "This is limiting our capacity to respond to the epidemic in Equateur Province."

However, the charity said it would send doctors, nurses and logistics experts to the region and would work with the government to open an Ebola case management centre in Lokolia.

Congo's Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said on Sunday the outbreak in Equateur was a different strain of the virus from the deadly Zaire version in West Africa.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf issued orders on Tuesday that any official of ministerial rank who had not returned to their duties would be dismissed. Civil servants who failed to report for work would also have their salaries suspended, a presidency official told Reuters.

Some Liberian officials have been fleeing the country or just not turning up at work for fear of contracting the virus, prompting President Ellen Johnson on Tuesday to issue orders threatening those of ministerial rank with dismissal.