World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only if provoked

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Japan offer snubbed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Fundamental disagreement’ 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Missing monitors 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ABUJA/KANO — Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan Thursday vowed total war against terrorism as the country’s security forces stepped up efforts to rescue more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamists 45 days ago.

“I am determined to protect our democracy, our national unity and our political stability by waging a total war against terrorism,” Jonathan said in an address marking 15 years since the return to civilian rule in Africa’s most populous country and largest economy.

“The unity and stability of our country, and the protection of lives and property are non-negotiable,” he said.

Nigeria returned to democracy on May 29, 1999 after nearly 16 years of military rule but the country has recently been blighted by a five-year Islamist insurgency in north and central Nigeria that has claimed thousands of lives.

The mass abduction of teenage girls on April 14 from a secondary school in Chibok in northeastern Borno state has sparked global outrage and drawn unprecedented attention to Boko Haram’s extremist uprising.

The incident has also drawn offers of military aid and intelligence from several foreign powers including the US, Britain, France and China.

“I have instructed our security forces to launch a full-scale operation to put an end to the impunity of terrorists on our soil,” Jonathan said.

“I have also authorised the security forces to use any means necessary under the law to ensure that this is done. I assure you that Nigeria will be safe again, and that these thugs will be driven away,” he vowed.

Jonathan linked the Boko Haram group with foreign organisations like Al Qaeda.

“For our citizens who have joined hands with Al Qaeda and international terrorists in the misguided belief that violence can possibly solve their problems, our doors remain open to them for dialogue and reconciliation, if they renounce terrorism and embrace peace,” he said.

Nigeria is increasingly keen to blame outside forces for the Boko Haram violence, but experts largely reject this claim and instead see the violence as largely domestically inspired.

There are also suggestions that Nigeria lacks the capacity to end the insurgency as acute poverty, illiteracy, underdevelopment, unemployment and official corruption mainly in the north have continued to fuel the violence.

“It is a sad fact that as I address you today, all the gains of the past 15 years of democratic governance in our country are threatened by the presence of international terrorism on our shores,” Jonathan said.

“Our dear country, Nigeria is facing a new challenge. A war has been unleashed on us. Extremist foreign elements, collaborating with some of our misguided citizens, are focused on an attempt to bring down our country and the democracy and freedom we cherish and celebrate today,” he said.

Jonathan, however, appealed to the Islamists to renounce violence and embrace peace.

“My government, while pursuing security measures, will explore all options, including a readiness to accept unconditional renunciation of violence by insurgents, and to ensure their de-radicalisation, rehabilitation and re-integration into the broader society,” he added.

Meanwhile, Boko Haram gunmen killed 35 people in attacks on three villages in Nigeria’s restive northeast Borno state near the border with Cameroon, a military source and residents said Thursday.

Dozens of Boko Haram gunmen dressed in military uniform stormed Gumushi, Amuda and Arbokko in all-terrain trucks and motorcycles, opening fire on residents and torching homes with petrol bombs, they said.

“Boko Haram attacked the three villages Wednesday morning in which 35 people were killed, including 26 in Gumushi,” a military officer in the state capital Maiduguri told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“The insurgents hurled petrol bombs into homes, setting them ablaze and shot residents as they tried to escape,” he said.

He said the gunmen raided Gumushi around 6:00am (0500 GMT) where they killed 26 residents.

Local media however put the death toll in Gumushi at 42.

Witnesses said the gunmen also launched coordinated attacks on the neighbouring farming villages of Amuda and Arbokko, 125 kilometres from Maiduguri, killing nine people and destroying scores of houses.

“The attackers came at 2:00am (01:00 GMT) when people were asleep and went about throwing Molotov cocktails into homes which exploded and set fire,” resident Pirda Takweshe told AFP.

“They then opened fire on people as they ran out of their homes, killing nine and injuring 13 others”.

Boko Haram which means “Western education is forbidden”, has stepped up deadly raids in northeast Nigeria in recent months, pillaging and burning entire villages and killing residents as part of its five-year-old campaign to establish an Islamic state in the north.

Violence blamed on the Islamist group has killed thousands since 2009.

SYDNEY — Australia Thursday ruled out a large swathe of Indian Ocean as Malaysian Flight MH370’s final resting place, compounding the frustration of passengers’ relatives who are still without answers almost three months on.

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre said a lengthy underwater search of an area where acoustic transmissions were detected in early April was now complete, as a US navy official queried whether the missing plane ever went there.

“The Joint Agency Coordination Centre can advise that no signs of aircraft debris have been found by the autonomous underwater vehicle since it joined the search effort,” JACC said.

It added that the Australian Transport Safety Bureau had advised that “the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370” in an outcome that prompted anger and scorn from relatives still desperate for closure.

It also sparked a strong reaction from Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who urged Malaysia to assign a new search plan for the missing jet.

“We expect Malaysia to take the leading and coordinating role, come up with a new search plan for the jet at an early date, and take the investigation seriously,” Li told Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is on a visit to China, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Nearly two-thirds of the passengers on the Beijing-bound aircraft were from China.

Australian ship Ocean Shield, which is carrying the US Bluefin-21 sub, has now left the area after scouring 850 square kilometres of sea bed for the jet that vanished flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 carrying 239 people.

Re-examining the data 

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said the search was concentrated where the pings were detected because it was “the best information available at the time”, without commenting on whether they came from the black box.

He added that Australia remained “very confident that the resting place of the aircraft is in the southern [Indian] Ocean”.

The US navy pinger locator, dragged by Ocean Shield, was used by searchers to listen for underwater signals in the remote southern Indian Ocean in an area where satellite data indicated the plane went down.

A series of signals it picked up prompted Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to say he was “very confident” they were from the black box, which led to the deployment of the sub on April 14.

JACC said the operation would now move to the next phase involving sophisticated equipment to scan the unmapped ocean floor, with all existing information and analysis reviewed to define a new search zone of up to 60,000 square kilometres.

A Chinese survey ship, Zhu Kezhen, is currently mapping areas of the ocean in preparation for the commercially contracted deep sea search, which is expected to begin in August and take up to 12 months.

Australia has previously said this work could cost A$60 million. It is not clear how expensive the search operation has been so far.

Scott Hamilton, managing director of US-based aerospace consultancy Leeham, said all the data would have to be re-examined “from start to finish” but he did not believe the search would be called off any time soon.

“I think it will be some time, perhaps years, before they completely throw in the towel,” he said.

Relatives frustrated 

Many relatives of those on board have voiced frustration over the lack of progress and accused Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday of withholding crucial satellite data.

That came after Malaysia on Tuesday released a 47-page summary of communication logs from the plane recorded by British satellite operator Inmarsat, information relatives had long demanded.

“So much time has passed and nothing has been found, so we doubt that the calculated position of the plane is correct,” said Steve Wang, a spokesman for a support group of relatives of the flight’s 153 Chinese passengers.

Wang said comments Thursday by the Australian-led search coordination agency had left him seething.

“I am afraid that maybe some days later they will say that they no longer have clues about it, and we will search for more clues, but after that will stop the search,” he said.

“We do not trust Malaysia, and today, since they have made such a big mistake, we do not trust the JACC.”

Malaysia insists it is doing all it can in what is an unprecedented situation.

Relying in part on the Inmarsat data, officials believe the jet inexplicably veered off its flight path before crashing into the sea, possibly after running out of fuel.

DONETSK, Ukraine — Pro-Russian separatists shot down on a Ukrainian army helicopter on Thursday, killing 14 soldiers including a general, as government forces pressed ahead with an offensive to crush rebellions in the east swiftly following the election of a new president.

After weeks of accusations from Kiev of Russian involvement in the uprising, a rebel leader in the eastern city of Donetsk acknowledged that some of his fighters who died in the government offensive had been “volunteers” from Russia, saying their bodies were being returned across the border.

In Kiev, outgoing acting president Oleksander Turchinov said the helicopter, which had been carrying supplies in eastern Ukraine, had been brought down by anti-aircraft fire from near the town of Slaviansk, which has been under the control of separatists since early April.

It was one of the heaviest losses suffered by the army during two months of separatist unrest, and followed a fierce assault by government forces in which 50 or so rebels were killed earlier this week.

“I have just received information that terrorists using Russian anti-aircraft missiles shot down our helicopter near Slaviansk. It had been ferrying servicemen for a change of duty,” Turchinov told parliament.

The bodies of some of the separatists killed this week when the Ukrainian military fought to regain control of Donetsk international airport were being prepared for return to Russia on Thursday, the rebel leader said.

In an admission that the rebels were being supported by Russian militia fighters, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, said: “Those who are volunteers from Russia will be taken to Russia today.”

At Donetsk’s Kalinin morgue, where the dead from the violence were taken, 30 coffins were laid out in rows on Thursday. “Yes. They’re going to Russia,” said an orthodox priest, who was edgy and did not wish to be named.

In another part of the morgue lay a local man, 43-year-old Mark Zverev, who had also been killed in the airport fighting. “Europe should know what is happening. He’s not a terrorist. He is a defender of his home, of his people and of his land,” said his mother, clutching his portrait.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov accused the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin of being behind the airport violence, which began when rebels seized a terminal the morning after Ukraine’s election. Weapons collected at the airport after the rebels were forced out by air strikes and a paratroop assault had been brought in from Russia, he said.

“These are not our weapons — they were brought from Russia. Serial numbers, year of production, specific models ... I am publishing this photograph as proof of the aggression of the Putin regime,” Avakov wrote on his Facebook page.

Kiev’s leaders have long asserted that Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March, has fomented the separatist rebellions in the east of Ukraine with a view to bringing about dismemberment of the country. Moscow denies it is involved.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Mikhailo Koval said on Thursday: “We have put all our forces and equipment into the anti-terrorist operation. We have covered the whole state border.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the West on Wednesday of pushing Ukraine into “the abyss of fratricidal war”, and reiterated his call for an end to Kiev’s offensive.

A separatist fighter, who gave his name only as Varan and said he was from the breakaway Georgian territory of Abkhazia, said he believed a total of 33 bodies of those killed this week would be taken back to Russia.

Wearing combat fatigues, body armour and reflective sunglasses, Varan told a Reuters correspondent outside Donetsk morgue that the separatists included fighters from Chechnya, Moscow and the southern Russian city of Rostov.

“The number of fighters is increasing and I think that the closer the Ukrainian army gets, the more fighters there will be because, you know, mobilisation has been called,” he said.

People in Donetsk, an industrial city of one million where the rebels hold the regional administration building and state security headquarters, said the atmosphere was edgy as rumours circulated that the army was poised to attack.

Asked if he was worried about gunbattles erupting in the city, the prime minister in the self-declared separatist government, Alexander Boroday, said: “A terrorist war may happen in the town although we are doing everything to stop that happening so that a peaceful life can continue in the town.”

In front of the provincial administration building, now headquarters of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, armed men from another separatist group, the “Vostok Battalion”, brought heavy lifting machinery to shift barricades. They said they were clearing space for a quick exit in case of attack.

Fierce assault

The assault launched on Monday was the first time Kiev has unleashed its full military force against the fighters after weeks of restraint and came the day after Ukrainians overwhelmingly elected Petro Poroshenko as president.

Poroshenko, 48, a billionaire confectionary magnate who became the first Ukrainian since 1991 to win the presidency outright in a single round of voting, marked his victory by calling for a swift offensive to crush the rebellions.

Poroshenko will have an opportunity to meet Putin when both attend commemorations of the 70th anniversary of World War II’s “D-Day” landings in Normandy on June 6, before Poroshenko returns to Kiev for his inuaguration. On June 3, Poroshenko is also expected to meet US President Barack Obama in Warsaw.

The separatist authorities say those who died on Monday and Tuesday included a truckload of wounded fighters blasted apart as they were driven away from the battlefield. The government said it suffered no losses in the operation, when its aircraft strafed the airport and paratroops landed to reclaim it.

A separatist leader in another part of the region acknowledged his men were holding four monitors from the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) who went missing in eastern Ukraine on Monday.

Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, whose group controls the town of Slaviansk, said the OSCE had been warned not to travel in the area, but had sent a four-man team all the same. He said they would be released soon.

The OSCE sent in about 300 observers to monitor compliance of an international accord for de-escalating the crisis in eastern Ukraine, where separatists have seized control of strategic points in several towns.

In Berlin, talks between Russia, Ukraine and the European Commission to resolve a gas dispute were to go ahead on Friday, the commission said, as time was running out to avert a threat of Moscow cutting off supplies to Ukraine.

Much of the gas Russia sells to the EU passes through Ukraine, so the dispute threatens onward supplies to Europe.

Moscow is urging Ukraine to pay part of its outstanding debt of more than $5 billion for gas supplied since last November. If Kiev fails to pay, Russia says it will continue supplies only on conditions of pre-payment. Ukraine says it will not make any payments until the two sides agree a new price for gas for 2014.

WEST POINT, United States — President Barack Obama mounted a defiant defence of his global leadership Wednesday, rebuking critics who see him as weak but warning that not every global threat justifies a US military response.

In a major speech at the West Point military academy, Obama denied US power had ebbed under his watch, after he withdrew troops from Iraq and as he does the same in Afghanistan.

He also pledged to ramp up support for Syrian rebels, vowed to stand up to Russia over Ukraine and promised to make drone strikes against terror suspects more transparent.

He vowed to hold China accountable to international “rules of the road” in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

“To say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders is not to say that every problem has a military solution,” Obama said.

Backbone of that leadership

“Since World War II, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures — without thinking through the consequences,” Obama said, in an apparent reference to the Iraq war, which he has branded a disaster.

The president’s speech came with his foreign policy, which was once seen as a political asset, under assault from critics who believe he is being outmanoeuvred by strongmen like Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping.

“Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military ... is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership.”

Obama was particularly exercised by those who complain he should have deployed the US military in Syria or made a more robust strategic response to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine, or who complain that he has left Iraq or Afghanistan to fend for themselves.

“Tough talk often draws headlines but war rarely conforms to slogans,” Obama said.

“But US military action cannot be the only, or even primary, component of our leadership in every instance.

“Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” Obama told a graduation ceremony at the college.

“And because the costs associated with military action are so high, you should expect every civilian leader — and especially your commander in chief — to be clear about how that awesome power should be used.”

Obama said he was “haunted” by the deaths of American servicemen under his watch — including some who attended previous commencement ceremonies he had given at West Point.

Obama also made an implicit defence of his decision to call off military strikes on Syria at the last minute last year to punish chemical weapons strikes.

Critics at home and abroad warned that the decision left dangerous questions about whether Washington would stand up to “red lines” elsewhere in the world.

Barrel bombings 

“I would betray my duty to you, and to the country we love, if I sent you into harm’s way simply because I saw a problem somewhere in the world that needed fixing, or because I was worried about critics who think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” he told the graduates.

Obama has been under increasing pressure to do more to support Syrian rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad and offer some relief to civilians reeling under strikes including barrel bombings carried out by the regime.

“As frustrating as it is, there are no easy answers — no military solution that can eliminate the terrible suffering anytime soon,” Obama said.

“As president, I made a decision that we should not put American troops into the middle of this increasingly sectarian civil war, and I believe that is the right decision.

“But that does not mean we shouldn’t help the Syrian people stand up against a dictator who bombs and starves his people.”

Obama said that he would work with lawmakers to ramp up support for the opposition, but did not give details, amid reports the US military will begin openly training rebel forces. The CIA is believed to be carrying out a covert programme to train and arm some rebels.

Washington has been loath, however, to send game-changing weapons like anti-aircraft missiles to rebel forces which it fears could fall into the hands of extremists.

Obama also said that terrorism remained the biggest national security threat to the United States and unveiled a new $5 billion fund to equip and train allies on the front lines of the struggle against terrorism, for instance in Africa.

He also defended his decision to leave nearly 10,000 troops in Afghanistan for a year after combat troops leave at the end of this year, and to gradually reduce the presence to a detachment of troops at the US embassy in Kabul by the end of 2016, just before he leaves office.

DONETSK, Ukraine — As the fighting becomes more ferocious in eastern Ukraine, Chechnya’s Moscow-backed leader is denying that he has sent in some of his famously ruthless troops to help the pro-Russia insurgents battling government forces.

Scores of rebel fighters have been killed this week around the major eastern city of Donetsk, and Ukrainian border guards have reported at least one gunbattle as they blocked groups of armed men trying to cross into Ukraine from Russia. Ukraine and the West have accused Moscow of fomenting the unrest, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied sending any troops or intelligence agents to help the insurgents.

Still, fighters who looked like Caucasus natives have been seen among the pro-Russia rebels who have seized government buildings, declared independence from Ukraine and are fighting government forces.

In a statement posted Wednesday on his Instagram, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said two-thirds of the 3 million Chechens live outside his province in Russia’s North Caucasus mountains, so he can’t “know where each of them goes”.

But he said it was possible that some pro-Russia Chechen fighters went to Ukraine on their own.

“If someone saw a Chechen in the zone of conflict, he’s there on his own,” he said.

Kadyrov’s forces, known for their warrior spirit and deadly efficiency, helped Russia win a quick victory in a 2008 war with neighbouring Georgia. The 37-year-old leader has vowed unswerving fealty to Putin and has hailed his policy in Ukraine.

In the most furious battle yet, rebels in Donetsk tried to take control of the city airport Monday, but were repelled by Ukrainian forces using combat jets and helicopter gunships. Dozens of men were killed and some morgues were overflowing Tuesday. Some insurgent leaders said up to 100 fighters may have been killed.

The city remained tense Wednesday, with Ukrainian fighter jets flying overhead. Some gunshots were heard.

In Slovyansk, a city 90 kilometres north of Donetsk that has seen constant clashes over the past few weeks, residential areas came under mortar shelling Wednesday from government forces. A school was badly damaged and other buildings were hit. Residents told The Associated Press that several people were wounded.

Kadyrov, a former rebel who fought Russian forces in the first of two devastating separatist wars, switched sides during the second campaign when his father became Chechnya’s pro-Moscow leader. Following his father’s death in a rebel bombing, Kadyrov rebuilt the region with generous Kremlin funding and squelched the rebel resistance with his ruthless paramilitary forces, which have been blamed for extrajudicial killings, torture and other abuses.

Putin praised Kadyrov last week after he negotiated the release of two Russian journalists arrested by Ukrainian forces and accused of assisting the rebels. The Chechen leader has not said how he got the journalists freed, but has directed threats at Ukrainian authorities.

“If the Ukrainian authorities want so much to see ‘Chechen units’ in Donetsk, why go to Donetsk if there is a good highway to Kiev?” he said in Wednesday’s statement.

However, he added that he fully supports Putin’s policy to help restore peace in Ukraine.

Putin has denied Ukraine’s allegations that Russia has sent its special forces to foment the mutiny. On Tuesday, Russia’s Federal Security Service rejected the Ukrainian claim that a convoy of vehicles loaded with weapons attempted to break through the border and engaged in a gunbattle with Ukrainian border guards.

Russia, which annexed Crimea in March, has ignored the requests of eastern insurgents to join Russia following controversial independence referendums. The Kremlin also welcomed Ukraine’s presidential election and said it was ready to work with the winner, billionaire candy magnate Petro Poroshenko, trying to deescalate the worst crisis in relations with the West since the cold war and avoid a new round of Western sanctions.

“It’s necessary to use the situation after the election to immediately end using the military and launch a broad all-Ukraine dialogue involving all regions and political forces,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday.

Russia has supported a plan by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe that calls for ending hostilities and opening a political dialogue. It has sought to cast the rebels’ actions as a response to the heavy-handed use of force by the central government.

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Ukrainian military action in the east was “pushing the situation into a deadlock, making it increasingly difficult to organise a dialogue”.

He said the Kremlin hadn’t received a letter from the insurgents asking Russia for assistance.

Ushakov said Putin will visit Paris on June 5, where he would meet with French President Francois Hollande and then travel to Normandy the next day for the 70th anniversary of the allied landing in Normandy. It will be Putin’s first meeting with President Barack Obama and other Western leaders since the start of Ukraine’s crisis.

Ushakov said there are no plans for any formal meetings but Putin would likely have informal contacts with the other leaders.

BANGKOK — Thailand’s junta Wednesday freed leaders of the “Red Shirt” movement allied to the ousted government, as social media users reacted with alarm to rumours of a “block” of Facebook.

Since seizing power last week the military has summoned more than 250 people, curtailed liberties under martial law and imposed a nightly curfew as part of a series of measures that have sparked dismay among rights groups.

A fugitive former Cabinet minister arrested by soldiers who swooped on a press briefing a day earlier was brought before a military court Wednesday to acknowledge charges of denying an order to report to the junta and of “provocation”, police said.

If convicted, ex-education minister Chaturon Chaisang could be imprisoned. He had used a press conference to criticise the coup minutes before being detained.

Analysts say the move to detain political figures from across the kingdom’s bitter divide is aimed at quelling potential opposition to the May 22 coup.

After an outcry on the Internet, the army interrupted national television to deny it had blocked Facebook after the site briefly went down and caused panic online.

“Surely that would be suicide. Whole country would protest,” one user wrote on Twitter of the rumours the site was under siege in the kingdom.

Some users were unconvinced with the junta’s denial, speculating that it could have been a trial run for a possible blackout in the future, or a warning shot to social media users not to criticise the coup.

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are hugely popular in the country, and have been used by anti-coup protesters to organise small protests against the military regime.

Despite warnings by the army of a widening crackdown on dissent, protesters have been gathering in Bangkok in small but vehement rallies against the military takeover, while rival pro-coup rallies have also sprung up.

 ‘Treated well’ 

But in a possible sign that the army is more confident about its grip on power, key members of the Red Shirt protest group were released Wednesday after nearly a week in detention.

The movement’s chairman, Jatuporn Prompan, said they were “treated well”.

“What we have been most concerned about is that the losses [of life] in 2010 should not happen again in 2014 — we should learn the lessons,” he said, referring to a bloody military crackdown on their rallies against a previous government that left dozens dead.

The army has said people who have been detained and released since the coup must sign a document promising to cease political activity.

Senior members of their rival protest movement as well as former premiers Yingluck Shinawatra and Abhisit Vejjajiva have also been held and since released.

Dozens of people are still being detained under broad army powers enabling the new government to hold people without charge for up to seven days.

Those freed “cannot travel overseas and must refrain from expressing political opinions that can cause confusion”, said army spokeswoman Sirichan Ngathong.

Thailand is no stranger to military intervention in politics, with 19 actual or attempted coups in its modern history.

The country has been rocked by increasingly severe political division and street protest for a decade.

The unrest centres on Yingluck’s elder brother Thaksin Shinawatra — a telecoms tycoon-turned-politician who was ousted by the military in an earlier coup in 2006.

The path towards the army takeover began late last year when anti-Thaksin forces launched protests in Bangkok calling for Yingluck’s government to be thrown out as they sought to rid Thai politics of the influence of the family, which they accuse of corruption.

At least 28 people died and hundreds more were wounded in violence linked to the rallies.

RINNEGOM/The Netherlands — In the Netherlands’ northwestern province of Rinnegom, more than 1,000 sheep grazed freely on 750 hectares of a farm; here they were not raised for dairy products but solely for landscape management and nature preservation.

In Lanscape Rinnegom (Dutch “landschapsbeheer Rinnegom”) farmers use herds to create a species rich vegetation through helping seeds spread in the area.

“Our sheep are neither for producing milk, cheese and meat nor for wool, hides and skins, but solely for landscape management and nature preservation,” Marijke Dirkson, the sheepherder, told journalists, who were part of a recent media tour organised by Holland Branding, Netherlands Enterprise Agency.

The idea is simple. Sheep graze in allocated and fenced areas in the forest and then through their manure they help spread seeds in the area, Dirkson explained. 

“Deposition of nitrogen has broken the natural cycle — that’s why it is important to break this development and get rid of nutrients — to go back to the original state of the natural habitat… Next generations will find the results of our actions today — the shepherds and their sheep herds who formed the landscape,” she added.  

With her job best described as “ecological landscape manager”, Dirkson said that nature management is based on three pillars: System of balancing variables; keeping focus, isolation by creating distance; and geographical spread of activities. 

“All is being practised in the landscape here.”

Lanscape Rinnegom is part of “Sheep Grazing” initiative, or “schapenbegrazing” in Dutch, involving 15 operating companies specialised in nature management, animal well-being and social coherence, according to Dirkson. 

She also said that the clients of “schapenbegrazing” are mainly governments, and water and land management organisations.