World

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Ukraine’s ousted pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych emerged defiant Thursday from five days in hiding as the country’s new leaders issued a blunt warning to Russia against any aggression on the volatile Crimean peninsula.

Anxious Western governments voiced fears about the “dangerous” situation in Crimea after dozens of pro-Kremlin gunmen in combat fatigues seized government buildings in the autonomous republic and pleaded with Moscow not to escalate tensions.

Yanukovych is to hold a press conference in Russia on Friday in his first public appearance since fleeing Ukraine at the weekend, Russian news agencies reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had stoked concerns Wednesday that Moscow might use its military might to sway the outcome of Ukraine’s three-month stand-off by ordering snap combat readiness drills near the border with the ex-Soviet state.

Interim president Oleksandr Turchynov responded by telling parliament that any movement of Russian troops out of their Black Sea bases in Crimea “will be considered as military aggression”.

Ukraine’s bloodiest crisis since its 1991 independence erupted in November when Yanukovych made the shock decision to ditch a historic EU trade pact in favour of closer ties with old master Russia.

Yanukovych, deposed at the weekend in a fast-moving drama after a week of bloodshed, broke his five-day silence by telling Russian news agencies from an undisclosed location he still viewed himself as president.

A high-ranking source quoted by the news agencies said the fugitive leader’s request for personal security had been “granted on Russian territory”, suggesting he was now there.

Ukraine had appeared to take a decisive swing back towards the EU by ousting Yanukovych and replacing his entire pro-Russian team with a new brand of younger politicians who will steer the nation — torn between a Russified east and pro-European west — until snap presidential polls are held on May 25.

The Verkhovna Rada parliament confirmed opposition icon Yulia Tymoshenko’s top ally Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister by a near-unanimous margin and approved the makeup of his untested but strongly pro-Western government.

“Ukraine is being torn apart,” a sombre Yatsenyuk said of the strategic but now splintered nation that has served as the geopolitical bridge between Russia and the West.

“But Ukraine sees its future in Europe. We will be a part of the European Union.”

The Russian tricolour was flying over the Crimean parliament and government buildings in the regional capital Simferopol as supporters of Moscow rule flocked in from across the scenic peninsula by car and bus.

The autonomous region’s prime minister Anatoliy Mohilyov told AFP up to 50 men with weapons had seized the buildings and were preventing government workers going inside.

But his predecessor Sergiy Kunitsyn told lawmakers in Kiev that his contacts in Crimea said the raid involved “about 120 well-trained gunmen armed with sniper rifles... and carrying enough ammunition to last them a month”.

The gunmen opened the doors to allow in lawmakers who quickly approved the staging of a regional referendum — also on May 25 — that would grant Crimea even greater independence from Kiev.

The referendum proposes granting Crimea “national sovereignty within Ukraine on the basis of existing treaties and agreements”.

Lawmakers — who were later escorted out by the besieging gunmen — also agreed to disband the region’s government and hand its powers to the heavily pro-Russian parliament.

The international response to the stand-off was swift and overwhelmingly critical of Russia.

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said at a NATO meeting that Moscow must be transparent about its military exercises.

“I urge them not to take steps that could be misinterpreted or lead to miscalculation,” he said in comments echoed by NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski — a strong proponent of Ukraine’s eventual EU membership — warned of “a very dangerous game” in Crimea.

And British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted that Russia respects the “sovereignty of Ukraine”.

Moscow responded by saying it was “strictly adhering” to existing treaties with Ukraine on the Black Sea fleet.

Yanukovych — wanted for “mass murder” over the deadly protests — had been widely believed to have gone into hiding in Crimea with his two sons and a small team of heavily armed guards.

But Russian television reported late Wednesday the 63-year-old was hiding in a government health resort near Moscow after fleeing his luxurious estate outside Kiev by helicopter.

Yanukovych’s statement Thursday did not disclose his whereabouts but it said he was “compelled to ask the Russian Federation to ensure my personal security from the actions of extremists”.

But a security source strongly implied he was already in Russia as Moscow had granted his request to ensure his personal security “on Russian territory”.

Moscow’s Interfax news agency quoted a source in Yanukovych’s entourage as saying he would give a press conference in the southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don on Friday at 1300 GMT.

Ukraine’s new leaders meanwhile are suffering from Moscow’s decision to freeze a $15-billion bailout package Putin promised to Yanukovych.

Kiev has requested as much as $35 billion in Western help and owes $13 billion in state debt payments this year — a massive sum in a country where state reserves have shrunk to less than $18 billion.

Concerns over what would be a catastrophic default saw the local currency plunge almost 10 per cent to a record low against the dollar Thursday.

The leadership in Kiev won some reprieve when US Secretary of State John Kerry promised quick delivery of $1 billion in loan guarantees “with some other pieces” to follow.

Kerry said the EU was looking at loan guarantees worth some $1.5 billion for the nation of 46 million people.

Any aid would probably be funnelled through a mechanism overseen by the International Monetary Fund which had frozen its assistance programme because of Yanukovych’s refusal to make painful structural changes.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde promised Thursday to send a fact-finding mission to Kiev in the coming days to launch a “preliminary dialogue with the authorities”.

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Fistfights broke out between pro- and anti-Russian demonstrators in Ukraine’s strategic Crimea region on Wednesday as Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered major military exercises just across the border.

The tests of military readiness involve most of the units in central and western Russia, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a televised statement. He said the exercise would “check the troops’ readiness for action in crisis situations that threaten the nation’s military security”.

In Kiev, opposition leaders who took charge after pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych fled were working on forming a new government to chart a path forward for the country and its ailing economy. Parliament has delayed the announcement of the new administration, which was originally set for Tuesday, reflecting the political divisions among the various factions of the opposition.

When announcing Russia’s military exercises, Shoigu didn’t specifically mention the turmoil in Ukraine, which is bitterly divided between pro-European western regions, and pro-Russian areas in the east and south.

Three months of protests forced Yanukovych to go into hiding over the weekend as his foes set up an interim government following violent clashes between protesters and police that left more than 80 people dead.

In Crimea’s regional capital of Simferopol, about 20,000 Muslim Tatars who rallied in support of the interim government clashed with a smaller pro-Russian rally. One health official said at least 20 people were injured, while the local health ministry said one person died from an apparent heart attack.

The protesters shouted and attacked each other with stones, bottles and punches, as police and leaders of both rallies struggled to keep the two groups apart.

They started to disperse after the speaker of the regional legislature announced it would postpone a crisis session, which many Tatars feared would have taken steps toward seceding from Ukraine.

“The threat of separatism has been eliminated,” Refat Chubarov, the leader of the Tatar community in Crimea, told the crowd.

Crimean Tatars are a Turkic Muslim ethnic group who have lived in Crimea for centuries. They were brutally deported in 1944 by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, but returned after Ukraine’s independence.

The tensions in Crimea — a peninsula in southern Ukraine that is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet — highlight the divisions that run through this country of 46 million, and underscore fears the country’s mainly Russian-speaking east and south won’t recognise the interim authorities’ legitimacy.

“Only Russia can defend us from fascists in Kiev and from Islamic radicals in Crimea,” said Anton Lyakhov, a 52-year-old pro-Russian protester.

According to the Russian defence minister, the military will be on high alert for two days as some troops deploy to shooting ranges. The actual maneuvers will start Friday and will last four days, he said. The exercise will involve ships of the Baltic and the Northern Fleets, and the air force.

The order came a day after a Russian lawmaker visiting Crimea said Moscow would protect the region’s Russian-speaking residents, raising concerns that Russia might make a military move into Ukraine.

“We take it for granted that all nations respect the sovereignty, and independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and this is a message that we have also conveyed to whom it may concern,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.

On Wednesday, Yanukovych’s three predecessors as president issued a statement accusing Russia of “direct interference in the political life of Crimea”.

Russian officials denied any plans to move militarily on Ukraine.

“That scenario is impossible,” said Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the upper chamber of Russia’s parliament, known as the Federation Council. She is a close Putin ally and was born in western Ukraine.

“Russia has been stating and reiterating its stance that we have no right and cannot interfere in domestic affairs of a sovereign state,” she said. “We are for Ukraine as a united state, and there should be no basis for separatist sentiments.”

In Kiev, the capital, protesters who have demanded that the new government be close to the people, cut down a fence surrounding the Parliament building.

Ukraine’s acting interior minister ordered the disbandment of a feared riot police force known as Berkut, which protesters blamed for violent attacks against peaceful demonstrators.

The force, whose name means “golden eagle”, consisted of about 5,000 officers. It was unclear Wednesday whether its members would be dismissed or reassigned to other units.

Protesters took to the streets after Yanukovych’s decision in November to reject an agreement that would strengthen ties with the EU and instead seek closer cooperation with Moscow.

Anti-Yanukovych protesters set up a camp on Kiev’s Independence Square, known as the Maidan, demonstrating against corruption and human rights abuses, and calling for the president’s resignation.

Under an EU-mediated plan, Yanukovych and protest leaders agreed to form a new government and hold an early election, but Parliament later voted to remove him from the presidency. The protesters took control of Kiev and seized the president’s office as Yanukovych fled the capital. His whereabouts are unknown.

In Lviv, a major city in the European-leaning west of Ukraine, leading cultural figures tried to defuse the tensions between the Russian-speaking east and the Ukrainian-speaking west, calling on residents to speak only Russian on Wednesday in a symbolic show of solidarity.

The call appeared to have had some effect.

“You can really hear a lot of Russian spoken on the streets of Lviv today,” said Konstantin Beglov, one of the campaign’s promoters, “although it often leads to funny situations because Lviv residents hardly ever speak Russian”.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama told President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday that he is now planning for a full US troop withdrawal because of the Afghan leader’s repeated refusal to sign a security pact.

But in a rare telephone call with Karzai, Obama also held out the possibility of agreeing a post-2014 training and anti-terror mission with the next government in Kabul.

The US threat was the latest twist in a long political struggle with Karzai, who appears intent on infuriating Washington until the day he leaves office, sometime after elections in April.

The Obama administration said its preferred option is to leave behind a residual US force when its combat teams depart Afghanistan after America’s longest war at the end of this year.

But it will not do so without legal protections enshrined in the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) agreed between the two governments, which Karzai will not endorse.

“President Obama told President Karzai that because he has demonstrated that it is unlikely that he will sign the BSA, the United States is moving forward with additional contingency planning,” a White House statement said, detailing the call.

“Specifically, President Obama has asked the Pentagon to ensure that it has adequate plans in place to accomplish an orderly withdrawal by the end of the year should the United States not keep any troops in Afghanistan after 2014.”

‘Zero option’ 

The White House had previously warned that Karzai’s intransigence on a deal painstakingly negotiated last year meant it had no choice but to mull the “zero option”.

The statement said Obama was reserving the possibility of concluding a BSA with Afghanistan later this year should the new government be willing.

It was the most concrete sign yet that Washington could wait out the Afghan electoral process before making a final decision on a future role in Afghanistan.

Though Karzai has refused to sign the pact, some candidates to replace him have indicated they would do so. The deal has also been endorsed by a council of tribal elders.

White House spokesman Jay Carney however said Washington was not certain a future government would be on board.

“I don’t think we would, given the experience we’ve had, predict with any great certainty what might happen,” he said, betraying US impatience with the situation.

“The longer we go without a signed BSA, the more likely a zero option becomes and even if a BSA is signed, the smaller the mission will have to be, by necessity, in scale and ambition.”

Although Afghanistan votes on April 5, a run-off and prolonged horsetrading could mean a government is not seated until August — further reducing US planning time.

‘Friendly’ conversation

In Kabul, presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi told AFP the conversation lasted 40 minutes and was friendly.

He said Karzai told Obama that Afghans wanted the BSA signed — but restated his condition that Washington must first bring the Taliban into peace talks.

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel backed Obama’s move and confirmed for the first time the Pentagon was actively planning a full withdrawal.

Hagel said that Pentagon brass would simultaneously plan options for a prolonged mission in Afghanistan, likely to include at least several thousand US troops.

The call between Karzai and Obama came hours before Hagel left for talks with NATO defence ministers in Brussels, at which he will share US planning on its future Afghan role.

The row over the BSA is the latest lurch in the deteriorating relationship between Washington and the mercurial Karzai, who was once seen as a savior after the toppling of the Taliban but is now viewed as unreliable.

Recently, Karzai’s release of 65 alleged Taliban fighters and warning to Washington to stop “harassing” his judicial authorities further alienated US officials.

Obama’s political opponents have warned that leaving Afghanistan without Western troops would strain fledgling national forces stood up by NATO and could lead to a return by the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

Some have compared such a scenario to Washington’s loss of focus after helping rebels oust Soviet occupiers in the 1980s, leaving a power vacuum exploited by the Taliban, which eventually harbored Al Qaeda as it planned the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Republican Senator John McCain said Obama should deal with a new Afghan government.

“The consequences of us completely pulling out would be the same as we just saw in Iraq: black flags of Al Qaeda flying over the city of Fallujah.”

KIEV — A former presidential aide despised by protesters has been shot and wounded, his spokesman said Tuesday, raising fears of retaliation as Ukraine charts a new tumultuous political course.

Andriy Klyuyev, who was President Viktor Yanukovych’s chief of staff until Sunday, was wounded by gunfire on Monday and hospitalised, his spokesman, Artem Petrenko, told The Associated Press.

The Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday, meanwhile, delayed the formation of a new government, reflecting political tensions and economic challenges after Yanukovych went into hiding.

Parliament speaker Oleksandr Turchinov, who was named Ukraine’s interim leader after Yanukovych fled the capital, said that a new government should be in place by Thursday, instead of Tuesday, as he had earlier indicated.

Turchinov is now nominally in charge of this strategic country of 46 million whose ailing economy faces the risk of default and whose loyalties are sharply torn between Europe and longtime ruler Russia.

Law enforcement agencies have issued an arrest warrant for Yanukovych over the killing of 82 people, mainly protesters — the bloodiest violence in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history — that precipitated him fleeing the capital on Friday after signing a deal with opposition leaders to end months of violent clashes between protesters and police.

For three months, thousands of people have been protesting against Yanukovych’s decision to ditch an agreement for closer ties with the European Union and turn to Russia instead as well as police brutality against demonstrators.

The parliament sacked some of Yanukovych’s lieutenants and named their replacement, but it has yet to appoint the new premier and fill all remaining government posts. Yanukovych’s whereabouts are unknown. He was last reportedly seen in the Crimea, a pro-Russia area.

The European Union’s top foreign policy official urged Ukraine’s new government to work out a reform programme so that the West could consider financial aid to the country’s battered economy.

Catherine Ashton spoke on Tuesday after meeting with the leaders of Ukraine’s interim authorities formed after president Viktor Yanukvoych fled the capital.

Protesters, meanwhile, removed a Soviet star from the top of the Ukrainian parliament building, the Verkhovna Rada. “The star on top of the Verkhovna Rada is no longer there,” said Oleh Tyahnybok, head of the nationalist Svoboda Party, which has been a strong force in the protest movement.

Meanwhile, a campaign for May 25 presidential elections was launched Tuesday, with Yanukovych’s archrival former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko widely seen as a top contender for the post. She was freed from prison on Saturday after spending two-and-a-half years there. Her aide said, however, that she hasn’t yet declared whether to run.

Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion, on Tuesday declared he would be a candidate.

Turchinov moved quickly to open a dialogue with the West, saying at a meeting with Ashton on Monday that the course towards closer integration with Europe and financial assistance from the EU were “key factors of stable and democratic development of Ukraine”.

Turchinov told Ashton on Monday that Ukraine and the EU should immediately revisit the closer ties that Yanukovych abandoned in November in favour of a $15 billion bailout loan from Russia that set off a wave of protests. Within weeks, the protests expanded to include outrage over corruption and human rights abuses, leading to calls for Yanukovych’s resignation.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has strongly condemned the new authorities, saying Monday they came to power as a result of an “armed mutiny” and their legitimacy is causing “big doubts”. ‘’If you consider Kalashnikov-toting people in black masks who are roaming Kiev to be the government, then it will be hard for us to work with that government,” Medvedev said.

The Russian foreign ministry criticised the West for turning a blind eye to what Moscow described as the opposition reneging on an agreement signed Friday to form a unity government and aiming to “suppress dissent in various regions of Ukraine with dictatorial and, sometimes, even terrorist methods”.

Although Russia has questioned the interim authorities’ legitimacy, European Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly referred to Turchinov as the “interim president”.

Tensions, meanwhile, have been mounting in Crimea in southern Ukraine. Russia maintains a large naval base in Sevastopol that has strained relations between the countries for two decades. Pro-Russian protesters gathered in front of city hall in the port of Sevastopol on Monday chanting “Russia! Russia!”

The head of the city administration in Sevastopol quit Monday amid the turmoil and protesters replaced a Ukrainian flag near the city hall building with a Russian flag.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position on the turmoil in Ukraine will be crucial to the future of Crimea and Ukraine. In recent days, Putin has spoken to President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders to discuss the Ukrainian crisis.

On Tuesday, Putin summoned top security officials to discuss the situation in Ukraine, but no details of the meeting were released by the Kremlin.

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan — Pakistani fighter jets bombarded Taliban hideouts in the troubled northwest Tuesday, killing at least 30 in the fourth airstrikes since peace talks stalled, in what analysts say is a surgical operation to reassert the military’s dominance.

The early morning attacks on hideouts in the North and South Waziristan tribal districts were the latest in a series of airstrikes by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) since February 20 that have killed more than 100 alleged militants.

Experts say the strikes are designed to give the military the upper-hand if talks eventually resume and do not believe the army is prepared to launch a full-fledged operation in the area.

Independent verification of the death tolls in the strikes has not been possible since it is difficult for journalists to enter the area and civilian administrators are reluctant to comment.

“The death toll from the airstrikes [on Tuesday] has risen to 30,” a security official in Peshawar told AFP, updating the earlier death toll of 15.

The focus of Tuesday’s attacks, which also involved helicopter gunships, was mostly the mountainous Shawal valley and Datta Khel in North Waziristan, and Sararogha in neighbouring South Waziristan, the officials said.

Helicopter gunships were still continuing shelling in both North and South Waziristan, considered bastions of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, they added.

Residents said hundreds of families have fled their homes.

“People are leaving the area after a deadlock in peace talks,” a resident of Miranshah told AFP by telephone requesting anonymity.

Earlier this month Pakistan had entered into talks with the Taliban aimed at ending their seven-year insurgency.

But the militant group continued carrying out attacks on a near-daily basis, with dialogue suspended after the insurgents claimed last week they had executed 23 kidnapped soldiers in a northwestern tribal region.

Since then the PAF has conducted a number of airstrikes in the volatile tribal regions.

Retired general and security analyst Talat Masood said the military may be attempting to strengthen its position if talks eventually resume.

“The peace process if at all it continues now would be from a position of strength and not from a position of weakness. For some time it looked like [the Taliban] had the upper hand. These attacks change that,” he said.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans to scale back the US Army by more than an eighth to its lowest level since before World War II, signaling a shift after more than a decade of ground wars.

Saying it was time to “reset” for a new era, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel recommended shrinking American forces from 520,000 active duty troops to between 440,000 and 450,000.

In a speech outlining the proposed defence budget, he said Monday that after Iraq and Afghanistan, US military leaders no longer plan to “conduct long and large stability operations”.

If approved by Congress, the Pentagon move would reduce the army to its lowest manning levels since 1940, before the American military dramatically expanded after entering World War II.

The proposed 13 per cent reduction in the army would be carried out by 2017, a senior defence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

The spending plan is the first to “fully reflect” a transition away from a war footing that has been in place for 13 years, Hagel said at a press conference.

The plan comes amid growing fiscal pressures and after years of protracted counter-insurgency campaigns, which saw the army reach a peak of more than 566,000 troops in 2010.

Having withdrawn US forces from Iraq in 2011, President Barack Obama has promised to end America’s combat role in Afghanistan by the end of this year.

The proposed cut in manpower along with plans to retire some older aircraft and reform benefits for troops could run into stiff resistance in Congress.

A senior US military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged the political challenge.

“We’re going to need some help from our elected representatives to get this budget across the finish line,” the officer said.

Several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee immediately expressed reservations about the budget proposal.

Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who sits on the committee, said the proposals had the “potential to harm America’s military readiness”.

The Pentagon had previously planned to downsize the ground force to about 490,000.

But Hagel warned that to adapt to future threats “the army must accelerate the pace and increase the scale of its post-war drawdown.”

Hagel also said the army national guard and reserves would be cut by 5 per cent.

The smaller force would entail some “added risk” but it would still be able to defeat an adversary in one region while also “supporting” air and naval operations in another, he said.

The Pentagon for years had planned to ensure the army could fight two major wars at the same time but that doctrine has been abandoned.

Even under the planned reductions, the US Army will remain one of the largest in the world and the American military’s budget still dwarfs other countries’ defence spending.

While the army will see troop numbers drop, the military’s elite special operations forces will be increased to 69,700 — up from 66,000 currently.

Retiring old aircraft

The proposed budget also calls for scrapping the Air Force’s entire fleet of A-10 “tank killer” aircraft and retiring the storied U-2 spy plane that dates back to the 1950s.

The A-10 enjoys backing from some lawmakers but commanders want to invest in the new hi-tech F-35 fighter jet and the unmanned Global Hawk surveillance drone.

The budget would reduce the US Navy’s planned fleet of littoral combat ships, a small vessel designed for coastal waters that faces questions about its reliability.

Instead of 52 LCS ships, the budget calls for building only 32 and requires the navy to study developing similar ships with heavier weapons and tougher defences.

Venturing into politically sensitive territory, Hagel called for slowing growth in pay and benefits — which make up nearly half the Pentagon’s budget — and closing more bases in the United States.

Lawmakers have long resisted base closures or any reform of pay, pensions or other benefits.

Military spending doubled after the attacks of September 11, 2001 but has started to decline as lawmakers push to slash government budgets.

Under a bipartisan accord adopted in December to avert automatic spending cuts, the Defence Department will have a $496 billion budget for fiscal year 2015.

But the Pentagon is backing a $26 billion “opportunity” fund that would bolster training and other programmes.

KIEV — Ukraine’s new authorities issued an arrest warrant on Monday for mass murder against ousted president Viktor Yanukovych, who is on the run after being toppled by bloody street protests in which police snipers killed demonstrators.

Russia, Yanukovych’s main backer, said it would not deal with Ukrainians who seized power from their elected leader in an “armed mutiny”. It declared that Russian citizens’ lives were under threat there, and contacted NATO to express concern.

With Ukraine’s neighbours raising the alarm about a break-up of Ukraine, Moscow said the concerns of local leaders in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Russian-speaking bastions of electoral support for Yanukovych, must be taken into account.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton arrived in Kiev to discuss measures to shore up the ailing economy, which the finance ministry said needs urgent financial assistance to avoid default.

The EU has contacted the United States, Japan, China, Canada and Turkey to coordinate aid for Ukraine, a senior EU official said. France’s foreign minister said an international donors’ conference was being discussed.

US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and IMF chief Christine Lagarde agreed Ukraine would need bilateral and multilateral support for any reforms, a US Treasury official said.

US Treasury officials will accompany Deputy Secretary of State William Burns on a trip to Kiev this week.

Ukraine’s parliament, exercising power as leaders try to form an interim government, replaced the head of the central bank, appointing lawmaker and former banker Stepan Kubiv.

Yanukovych, 63, who fled Kiev by helicopter on Friday, was still at large after heading first to his power base in the east, where he was prevented from flying out of the country, and then diverting south to the Crimea peninsula on the Black Sea, acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said.

“An official case for the mass murder of peaceful citizens has been opened,” Avakov wrote on Facebook. “Yanukovich and other people responsible for this have been declared wanted.”

Yanukovych had left a private residence in Balaclava, near the home base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol, for an unknown destination, Avakov said. He went by car with one of his aides and a handful of security guards.

It was an ignominious political end for Yanukovych who has been publicly deserted by some of his closest erstwhile allies, stripped of his luxury residence near Kiev and had to witness the release from prison of his arch-rival Yulia Tymoshenko.

Ambassador recalled

Russia recalled its ambassador from Kiev for consultations on Sunday, accusing the opposition of having torn up a transition agreement with the president it supported.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow had grave doubts about the legitimacy of those now in power in Ukraine and their recognition by some states was an “aberration”.

“We do not understand what is going on there. There is a real threat to our interests and to the lives of our citizens,” Medvedev was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Russia cited a duty to protect the lives of its citizens in 2008 as one justification for military intervention in Georgia, another former Soviet republic, in support of Kremlin-backed separatists in South Ossetia.

On Independence Square in central Kiev, cradle of the uprising, barricades of old furniture and car tyres remained in place, with smoke rising from camp fires among tents occupied by diehards vowing to stay until elections in May.

The mood among the few hundred on the square was a mixture of fatigue, sorrow for the more than 80 people killed last week, and a sense of victory after three months of protests.

A large video screen by the side of the stage was showing the faces of the dead, one after another, on a loop.

“Now is not the time for celebrating. We are still at war. We will stay here as long as we have to,” said Grigoriy Kuznetsov, 53, dressed in black combat fatigues.

Galina Kravchuk, a middle-aged woman from Kiev, was holding a carnation. “We are looking to Europe now. We have hope. We want to join Europe, “ she said.

New law

A day after Yanukovych fled, parliament named its new speaker, Oleksander Turchinov, as interim head of state. An ally of Tymoshenko, he aims to swear in a government by Tuesday that can run things until a presidential election on May 25.

Whoever takes charge faces a huge challenge to satisfy popular expectations and will find an economy in deep crisis, with state debt payments of around $6 billion due this year.

The finance ministry said it needed $35 billion in foreign assistance over the next two years and appealed for urgent aid in the next one or two weeks. It called for a donors’ conference involving representatives of the European Union, the United States and the International Monetary Fund.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters in Beijing the idea was under discussion and “this should be worked out in the coming days”.

The cost of insuring Ukraine’s debt fell on hopes that the country would now receive aid and avoid default, while bonds recorded gains on expectations that a new government would focus on the economy.

Ukrainian stocks soared to their highest since September 2012, But the hryvnia currency tumbled to a five-year low against the dollar as expectations grew the new government would focus on using dwindling foreign reserves to repay debt rather than defend the currency.

Scuffles in Crimea and some eastern cities between supporters of the new order in Kiev and those anxious to stay close to Moscow revived fears of separatism. A week ago those concerns were focused on the west, where Ukrainian nationalists had disowned Yanukovych and proclaimed self-rule.

‘Grave mistake’

President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, was asked on US television about the possibility of Russia sending troops to Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin had hoped Yanukovych would keep closely allied to Moscow.

“That would be a grave mistake,” Rice said on Sunday. “It’s not in the interests of Ukraine or of Russia or of Europe or the United States to see a country split.”

Yanukovych’s flight left Putin’s Ukraine policy in tatters, on a day he had hoped eyes would be on the grand finale to the Sochi Olympics. The Kremlin leader spoke on Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose foreign minister had brokered a short-lived truce in Kiev on Friday.

They agreed Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” must be maintained, Merkel’s spokesman said.

It is unlikely the United States and its allies in NATO would risk an outright military confrontation with Russia, but such echoes of the Cold War underline the high stakes in Ukraine, whose 46 million people and sprawling territory are caught in a geopolitical tug of war.

In Russia, where Putin had wanted Ukraine as a key part in a union of ex-Soviet states, the finance minister said the next tranche of a $15 billion loan package agreed to in December would not be paid, at least before a new government is formed.

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan — Unknown gunmen killed a senior commander of the Pakistani Taliban who had a government bounty on his head on Monday, as a suicide bomb attack targeting the Iranian consulate in Peshawar left two dead.

Asmatullah Shaheen, who was believed to be in his mid-40s and was a former interim chief of Pakistan’s Taliban, had a 10-million-rupee ($95,000) bounty payable for his death.

Hours later a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Iranian consulate, in Peshawar, the main city in the restive northwest, killing two paramilitary troops and wounding ten other people.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for either attack and it is not clear whether they are linked.

Shaheen was ambushed in Dargah Mandi village near Miranshah, the main town in the troubled North Waziristan tribal district, with a local security official blaming a rival militant group.

Despite his seniority, he was a highly controversial figure within the Pakistani Taliban.

Observers do not believe his death will have a major impact on the future of stalled peace talks with the government that began this month.

“Unknown attackers opened fire on Asmatullah Shaheen’s car. He along with three associates died on the spot,” a security official in Miranshah told AFP on condition of anonymity.

A close relative of Shaheen told AFP that in addition to those killed, two other people travelling in the car were critically wounded.

The attackers fled in a separate vehicle, the security official said.

Shaheen was leader of the Bhittani tribe and also chairman of the Taliban’s supreme council for more than two years.

But a militant source close to Shaheen told AFP he was removed from the post in December after developing differences with several militant commanders.

Notorious commander

Shaheen gained notoriety after claiming responsibility for a suicide attack on a Shiite procession in Pakistan’s largest city Karachi, which killed 43 people and wounded more than 100 in December 2009.

He was responsible for storming a paramilitary outpost in the northwestern district of Tank in 2011, killing one soldier and kidnapping 15. Eleven of the detainees were later executed while the rest escaped.

An intelligence official in Peshawar said Shaheen was also wanted for masterminding other attacks on Pakistani troops that included suicide attacks.

Imtiaz Gul, a security analyst and author of “The Most Dangerous Place - Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier”, told AFP that the killing was likely the result of Shaheen’s several enmities.

“Militant groups have fought against each other in the past and the killing of Asmatullah Shaheen is apparently because of those internal differences,” he said.

 ‘Bomber targeted consulate’

In the Peshawar attack, a suicide bomber carrying five kilogrammes of explosives blew himself up after being stopped at a checkpoint by paramilitary troops, bomb disposal squad official Shafqat Malik told AFP.

The bomber wanted to target the consulate but blew himself up when intercepted, he added.

The attack took place in the upmarket University Town area of the northwestern city, where many non-government organisations are also based.

“We have two bodies of paramilitary soldiers and ten wounded have been admitted to hospital,” said Farhad Khan, a spokesman for Khyber Teaching Hospital where the casualties were taken.

Earlier this month Pakistan entered into talks with the Taliban aimed at ending their seven-year insurgency.

But the militant group continued carrying out attacks on a near-daily basis. The dialogue was suspended after the insurgents claimed they had executed 23 kidnapped soldiers in a northwestern tribal region.

Since then the air force has been carrying out attacks in the volatile tribal regions which border Afghanistan, killing dozens.

Imran Khan, chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf Party which leads the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said it was now up to the Taliban to save the talks by announcing a ceasefire.

“The Taliban should announce a ceasefire to save the dialogue process,” said Khan, who is often accused of being sympathetic to the militants.

“The government should talk to the Taliban groups who want to talk. But they should take action against the groups who don’t want to talk,” he added.

ROME — Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called for a “radical and immediate change” in Italy in an energetic and impassioned speech to parliament Monday which outlined his government programme but was light on detail.

The new premier said there were no excuses for failing to tackle the recession-hit country’s ills and told senators Italy would become a “country of opportunity” in a largely ad-lib speech ahead of a confidence vote in the upper house of parliament.

“If we lose this challenge the fault will be all mine. No-one has an alibi anymore,” said the 39-year-old — Italy’s youngest ever prime minister.

“This is an Italy of possibilities, an Italy of fundamental change,” he said, stressing the “urgency” of implementing reforms in “a rusty country... gripped by anxiety”.

Renzi, who grasped power after helping oust his predecessor Enrico Letta over failures to do enough to boost a flagging economy, reiterated plans for rapidly overhauling the tax system, job market and public administration.

Telling the personal stories of specific individuals — including a jobless father and a man killed by a reckless driver — he pledged to review unemployment benefits, establish a guarantee fund for small companies and comprehensively reform the justice system.

He also promised to cut the tax burden by a double-digit figure by the first half of 2014 and pay off public administration debts.

The confidence vote later Monday will be a key test of Renzi’s power to unite warring factions in Italy’s parliament and secure a solid majority.

The former mayor of Florence is expected to win based on the support of his own centre-left Democratic Party and his coalition partners — the centrists and the New Centre Right Party.

Political analysts will however be paying close attention to the size of the majority he manages to secure, as an indication as to whether the new government has a chance of living out its mandate until 2018 or whether the country will end up back at the polls.

“We are not afraid of going to the polls,” Renzi said.

Former premier Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia Party is in opposition, although it has agreed to support key decrees on a case by case basis.

The anti-establishment Five Star movement — Italy’s other main opposition party — has slammed Renzi for stealing the top job and called for immediate elections, and some political watchers say Renzi’s failure could significantly boost their numbers.

A bold-faced Renzi stared down critics hollering insults from among the movement’s benches and spoke out against populism and for Europe.

He said Italy must tackle its towering public debt — equivalent to 130 per cent of total economic output — not because German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for it, but because “it is our duty to, for our children’s sake”.

He spoke of the need for greater transparency — making public spending receipts available online — and of the need to attract foreign investors and shake off the image of Italy “as just a great holiday destination”.

Renzi’s insistence on speed has impressed some analysts, who say it may help him avoid getting stifled under the weight of Italian bureaucracy.

“By keeping up the momentum, Renzi is increasing the chances of these important reforms going through despite likely resistance from various camps,” Christian Schulz, senior economist at Berenburg, said in a note.

“Much will depend on the concrete reform proposals and how they will be watered down in the inevitable political wrangling afterwards,” he said.

But Chiara Corsa and Loredana Federico from Unicredit asked “whether the Renzi government is strong enough or sufficiently ‘revolutionary’ to implement the reform agenda”.

CARACAS — Anti-government demonstrators set up barricades and started fires in Venezuela’s capital on Monday despite calls from within the opposition to rein in protests in which at least 12 people have died in the OPEC nation.

Traffic slowed to a crawl around Caracas and many people stayed at home, as protesters burned trash and piled debris along main avenues a day after opposition leader Henrique Capriles called on them to keep demonstrations peaceful.

“We know we’re bothering people but we have to wake up Venezuela!” student Pablo Herrera, 23, said next to a barricade in the affluent Los Palos Grandes district of Caracas.

Authorities in the convulsed border state of Tachira confirmed the latest death from the unrest: a man hit by a stray bullet watching a protest from the balcony of his apartment.

The most sustained unrest in Venezuela for a decade is the biggest challenge to President Nicolas Maduro’s 10-month-old government, though there is no sign it will topple him nor affect oil shipments from Latin America’s biggest exporter.

Capriles, 41, was invited to meet Maduro in the afternoon as part of a gathering of mayors and governors that could open up communications between the two sides but may not be able to stem the nearly two weeks of street violence.

He and other opposition figureheads are demanding that the government release imprisoned protest leader Leopoldo Lopez and about a dozen jailed student demonstrators.

They also want Maduro to disarm pro-government gangs and address national issues ranging from crime to shortages of basic products. Hardline student protesters, though, are demanding that Maduro step down, less than a year into his term.

The president, a 51-year-old former union activist who has made preserving Chavez’s legacy the centerpiece of his rule, accuses opponents of planning a coup backed by Washington.

Capriles, who has seen his leadership of the opposition upstaged by Lopez’s street activism, lashed Maduro for talking “rubbish” and said he was unsure if he would attend the meeting scheduled for the afternoon at the presidential palace.

Socialist governor speaks out

The governor of the turbulent state of Tachira, who belongs to the ruling party, on Monday criticised the government’s response to the protests and called for Lopez to be freed — an extremely unusual stance for a Socialist Party official.

“It’s a matter of peace; all of those in jail for political motives should be sent home,” said Jose Vielma, referring to Lopez and another well-known opposition-linked prisoner.

Socialist Party leaders have for years avoided making comments that could appear to be breaking away from the party line, making Vielma’s comment all the more uncommon.

The protests have hit the border state Tachira harder than any other, with gangs of student demonstrators now the de facto authorities in some parts of its principal cities.

Even though Maduro has sent in troops to restore order, transport is frequently disrupted by improvised roadblocks that charge tolls to those seeking passage and throw rocks at those who attempt to move on without paying.

Supermarkets in Tachira are opening only for several hours in the morning, with supplies of food limited because delivery trucks cannot get through.

The nationwide wave of protests began with sporadic demonstrations in Tachira’s capital of San Cristobal due to outrage over an attempted rape, sparking student protests around the region.

Lopez, a 42-year-old Harvard-educated economist and firebrand opposition leader, rode the coattails of those protests to create a nationwide effort called “La Salida” or “The Exit” meant to end Maduro’s rule.

Relatives of Lopez, who was arrested on Tuesday, said he was bearing up at Ramo Verde prison outside Caracas. “He’s strong. But he’s a prisoner, and for a mother, it’s devastating,” his mother Antonieta Mendoza de Lopez told Reuters.

The wave of violence has shifted attention away from economic troubles including inflation of 56 per cent, slowing growth, and shortages of staple goods such as milk and flour.

The opposition blames these problems on Chavez’s economic legacy of nationalisations, currency controls and constant confrontation with businesses.

They say socialism has crippled private enterprise and weakened state institutions while spawning a nepotistic elite that enriches itself with the country’s oil wealth.

Maduro calls it an “economic war” led by the opposition. The former bus driver calls himself the “son” of Chavez and has vowed to continue the generous public spending that helped reduce poverty and propelled the late president to repeated election victories over 14 years.