World

GENEVA/ADDIS ABABA — The co-pilot of a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines flight surrendered to Swiss authorities in Geneva on Monday after commandeering his aircraft to seek asylum in Switzerland, police said.

The plane’s second-in-command, named by Ethiopia as Hailemedhin Abera Tegegn, 31, took control of the plane when the pilot left the cockpit to use the toilet.

After landing, Hailemedhin left the aircraft via a cockpit window, without harming passengers or crew, police spokesman Pierre Grangean told a news conference. He was not carrying a weapon.

“Just after landing, the co-pilot came out of the cockpit, and ran to the police and said, ‘I’m the hijacker.’ He said he is not safe in his own country and wants asylum,” Grangean said.

The opposition and rights campaigners in Ethiopia accuse the government of stifling dissent, and torturing political detainees. But it is rare for state officials and employees — Ethiopian Airlines is run by the state — to seek asylum. The last senior official to do so fled to the United States in 2009.

Ethiopia said Hailemedhin had worked for Ethiopian Airlines for the past five years and had no criminal record.

“So far it was known that he was medically sane, until otherwise he is proven through the investigation which is going on right now,” Redwan Hussein, spokesman for the Horn of Africa’s government, told a news conference.

Redwan said Ethiopia may ask for his extradition.

Ethiopian Airlines pilots had visas to travel freely to Europe, he said, adding that it made no sense to hijack one’s own plane given “that the anti-hijacking law in any country is severe” and can lead to up to 20 years in prison.

Redwan said among the 193 passengers on board the Boeing aircraft were 139 Italians, 11 American and four French nationals.

Code ‘hijack’

Flight ET702 departed the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday evening and was bound for Rome. The plane was hijacked at about 0330 GMT while over northern Italy, Grangean said. It landed at Geneva at 6:02am (0502 GMT).

He said the co-pilot, an Ethiopian born in 1983, locked the flight deck door when the pilot went to the toilet. He then asked to refuel at Geneva, landed the plane, climbed down on an emergency exit rope from a cockpit window and gave himself up.

Robert Deillon, CEO of Geneva airport, said air traffic controllers learnt the plane had been hijacked when the co-pilot keyed a distress code into the aircraft’s transponder,

“There is... a code for hijack. So this co-pilot put in the code for ‘I just hijacked the aircraft’,” he said. As the plane was over Italy at the time, two Italian Eurofighters were scrambled to accompany it, he said.

The brief drama in Geneva on Monday morning caused the cancellation of some short-haul flights and some incoming flights were diverted to other airports. Hundreds of passengers booked on disrupted flights sought to change their tickets.

In an apparent recording of a radio communication between the Ethiopian plane and air traffic control posted on social media site Twitter, a demand for asylum was made.

“We need asylum or assurance we will not be transferred to the Ethiopian government,” the voice in the recording, apparently the co-pilot, said.

Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the recording.

Ethiopian nationals and the country’s flag carrier have been involved in several hijackings in the past. At least 50 people were killed when a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet crashed in the Indian Ocean in 1996.

JOHANNESBURG — At least 200 workers were feared trapped in an illegal gold mine in South Africa on Sunday, in the second accident in the country’s mining industry in as many weeks.

Rescuers were using heavy duty equipment to try to clear a way out for the men stuck in the mine near Johannesburg, emergency services said.

“We have got communication with about 30 trapped miners. They have told us that underneath them there’s 200 others,” Werner Vermaak, spokesman for private emergency operators ER24, told AFP.

But he said he could not independently confirm the figure of 200, while local municipality officials could only confirm 30 trapped.

The workers went down on Saturday into the mine, which has been dug illegally behind a cricket stadium in the Benoni district east of Johannesburg.

They failed to come out after boulders fell and blocked their way, municipal rescuers said.

“We are currently in the process of attempting to rescue them,” Roggers Mamaila of the Ekurhuleni municipality emergency services told AFP.

A large boulder blocking the entrance to the shaft was removed using heavy duty excavation equipment, but smaller rocks remained, making it impossible for the rescuers to go in and help bring out the miners.

But food and water has been lowered in by rope.

“They have been able to hand food and water to the illegal miners but to pull them out is proving very difficult due to the amount of rubble on the entrance,” said Vermaak.

Police on patrol nearby discovered the men when a passer-by said he had heard voices of people screaming for help from underground.

Public broadcaster SABC radio said the miners were trapped after allegedly being robbed of their gold by a rival gang on Saturday.

Accidents commonplace

No investigation has yet been launched, police said.

Accidents are commonplace in South Africa’s mines, which are the deepest in the world.

At least eight miners were killed nearly two weeks ago after an earth tremor sparked an underground blaze at a Harmony Gold mine west of Johannesburg.

In July 2009, nine workers were killed in a rock fall in a platinum mine.

The same year, at least 82 people digging illegally in an disused gold mine shaft died when a fire broke out underground.

Minerals Minister Susan Shabangu last week lashed out at the poor safety record at regulated mining operations, where 14 deaths have been recorded in the first seven weeks of this year.

“One death is one too many,” she said on Thursday.

Throughout the 20th century, an estimated 69,000 people died in South Africa’s mining industry, according to a government-sponsored commission of inquiry.

But the number of fatal accidents has fallen sharply in recent years.

According to union figures, 112 people died in the mines in 2012.

South Africa’s gold output has steadily decreased over the past 40 years, sliding from top global producer to world number six.

It produced 167,235 kilogrammes of gold in 2012. 

KIEV — Ukrainian opposition protesters ended a two-month occupation of city hall in Kiev on Sunday and opened a road to limited traffic to meet an amnesty offer aimed at easing a stand-off over President Viktor Yanukovich’s rule.

The authorities, for their part, withdrew riot police from a flashpoint district of the capital, near the Dynamo Kiev football stadium, where at least three protesters died in January in violence between ultra-radical activists and police.

Despite the conciliatory moves, opposition leaders sought to keep up pressure on Yanukovich, telling a rally in Kiev’s Independence Square that he must abandon “dictatorial” powers and let them form a government that would be independent of him.

Tension still simmered before a parliament session on Tuesday when Yanukovich may present his candidate for prime minister — a choice that will show if he is ready to make more concessions to the opposition after 12 weeks of often ugly street confrontation.

Opposition leaders made it clear on Sunday they would also push at the parliament session for constitutional changes to reduce Yanukovich’s powers.

The unrest was sparked by Yanukovich in November when he spurned a free trade agreement long in the making with the European Union, and opted for a $15 billion package of Russian credits and cheaper gas to shore up Ukraine’s ailing economy.

The revolt spiralled into countrywide protests at perceived sleaze and corruption in the Yanukovich administration, and has triggered a geopolitical tussle between East and West.

As Russia beckons with the $15 billion aid package to plug holes in Ukraine’s heavily-indebted economy, the United States and its Western allies have urged Yanukovich to move back towards an IMF-backed deal with Europe.

At least six people have been killed and hundreds of people - police and protesters - wounded in the bloodshed.

As Sunday’s peaceful rally unfolded on Independence Square, attracting several thousand, young club-wielding masked men from the radical fringe of the protest movement who were on patrol, looking for government agents known locally as “titushki”.

A group of about 40 young men, wearing black balaclavas and carrying shields that announced they were from the 14th “self-defence” unit, marched through crowds gathered near the Dynamo Kiev football stadium, a frontline in the unrest.

On Saturday, at the other end of the city, several men who protested against barricades in the city emerged with bloodied faces after clashes with local “self-defence” units.

Western governments have expressed fears of an escalation of conflict, and breakdown of law and order unless Yanukovich meets opposition demands.

‘Front-line’ deal

All the same, tensions calmed at the Dynamo football stadium “front-line” with riot police leaving the streets, and protesters opening a passage for limited traffic to go through barricades to government headquarters and parliament.

On Sunday, former economy minister Arseny Yatseniuk repeated calls for constitutional changes that would strip Yanukovich of powers he has accumulated and enable an opposition government to be formed to lead the ex-Soviet republic to economic recovery.

After protesters departed Kiev’s City Hall, which they had occupied since early December, Yatseniuk called on Ukraine’s judicial authorities to live up to their amnesty promise and drop all criminal charges against protest activists.

Demonstrators had swept into the main municipal building as popular revolt took off against Yanukovich’s decision to ditch the EU trade pact in favour of a more immediately lucrative deal with Russia, Ukraine’s former Soviet master.

Under an amnesty arrangement, Ukrainian authorities have offered to drop all criminal charges against activists who have been provisionally freed as long as municipal buildings are cleared of protesters and some main roads unblocked by Monday.

“We want about 2,000 criminal cases to be dropped. If this does not happen, we will start a peaceful offensive,” Yatseniuk declared.

Switzerland, now chairman of the OSCE human rights watchdog, sent an envoy to Kiev to monitor the City Hall evacuation. Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter said in a statement later: “I strongly hope this brings Ukraine closer to a resolution of the current deadlock through peaceful and democratic means.”

In Brussels, the EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton also welcomed the move, saying she expected the authorities now to close all pending court cases, including house arrests “so as to facilitate the political dialogue in parliament this week”.

Masked men

Masked men in military fatigues and the demonstrators they had protected against riot police since mid-December filed out of Kiev city hall but threatened to return if authorities did not carry out the amnesty promise.

Opposition deputies said protesters had similarly pulled out of municipal buildings in several areas of western Ukraine, a hotbed of opposition to Yanukovich, and in one part of the southeast where the president has retained more support.

Andriy, 45, commander of about 100 men in black balaclavas leaving City Hall, said they were doing so on the understanding that charges against detained activists would be dropped.

Asked what he and his men would do if the authorities did not fulfil their promise, he replied: “Then we’ll come back.”

A pivotal decision in coming days will be who Yanukovich names as his candidate for prime minister to replace the Russian-born Mykola Azarov, whom he sacked on January 28 in an unsuccessful attempt to appease the protesters.

He has until the end of the month to reach a decision although parliament speaker Volodymyr Rybak was quoted by Interfax as saying he thought Yanukovich might present his candidate to parliament on Tuesday.

His choice could decide more credit coming quickly on stream from Russia under the bailout package. But if he resists calls for constitutional change and names a hardliner, the streets could return to uproar. With the hryvnia under devaluation pressure, he has to find a new steward of the economy quickly.

KIEV — Protesters occupying Kiev city hall said Saturday they stood “ready” to vacate the premises, in a gesture of goodwill after authorities released all those detained in the anti-government unrest rocking the country.

The “headquarters of the revolution” since the protest movement rocking Ukraine began more than two months ago, the building where 600 to 700 protesters camp out is highly symbolic and the concession comes ahead of a fresh, mass demonstration due on Sunday.

But in a strongly worded interview, jailed opposition icon Yulia Tymoshenko warned that nothing short of President Viktor Yanukovych’s resignation would satisfy protesters, up in arms over his decision to ditch an EU pact in favour of closer ties with Russia.

Speaking to AFP Saturday, Yuriy Syrotyuk, the number-two of the nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) Party that controls the occupied city hall, said protesters stood “ready” to evacuate, and could do so “in a few minutes, at most half-an-hour” if the green light was given.

The evacuation of the building was one of the conditions set by authorities as part of an amnesty law that stipulates all detained protesters will be freed — but only if some parts of the Ukrainian capital are vacated.

Yanukovych approved the law at the beginning of February after protests in Kiev turned deadly, shocking the country and prompting the shaken president to start negotiating with the opposition.

On Friday, authorities announced they had freed all 234 detained members of the protest movement, adding that charges against them would also be dropped if conditions of the amnesty were met.

Some of them have been charged with fomenting mass unrest, which carries a sentence of up to 15 years in jail.

The move — welcomed by the United States — appeared to be a concession from the government in a bid to ease tensions, and Yanukovych himself promptly appealed to the opposition to yield ground too.

Protesters stormed city hall, on the main Khreshchatyk avenue in central Kiev, on December 1 following a brutal crackdown on demonstrators the previous night.

It is run with military precision, housing hundreds of protesters who sleep there to get out of the biting cold and gather for meetings, English lessons and other activities.

And while the opposition has still not unanimously agreed to vacate the building, most members support the move, Syrotyuk said.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, one of the three main opposition leaders, said in a statement that protesters would remain on Kiev’s occupied Independence Square and in other public buildings, but tellingly made no mention of city hall.

The opposition has also agreed to vacate “part” of Gruchevsky street, where the deadly riots took place at the end of January, to allow traffic to move freely.

But as protesters geared up for the mass demonstration on Sunday due at 1000 GMT — the 11th since the unrest began — Tymoshenko said that Yanukovych must go.

“The only subject of negotiation with Yanukovych is the conditions of his departure,” the former prime minister who was imprisoned in 2011 said in an interview with weekly Dzerkalo Tyzhnia.

In city hall, Commander Ruslan Andryko of the protest movement said as much, noting that while they may vacate the building, “the revolution has only just started”.

And on the square, Marina Nekrasova, who strolled in the sprawling tent city under a low, grey sky with her young daughter, said she did not know how long the occupation would continue.

“But when Yanukovych resigns, we will all have a big party here,” she said, smiling.

Outside the country, in Berlin, tortured activist Dmytro Bulatov, who sought treatment in Lithuania before travelling to Germany, pledged to fight to the end.

“I want to go back to Ukraine,” he told reporters, ruling out applying for asylum. “We will continue to resist and to protest.”

For her part, Tymoshenko accused Yanukovych of having become a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying Ukraine had lost the independence it gained from the Soviet Union in 1991.

“Our European friends believe that after long negotiations and loans they can bring Yanukovych back onto the European road,” Tymoshenko said.

“They will not be able to do that. Because it’s not Yanukovych who decides, but Putin.”

ANKARA — Turkey’s parliament passed a bill Saturday tightening government control over the judiciary, with lawmakers violently scuffling over the contested reforms introduced amid a major graft scandal.

Fighting erupted overnight with fists flying in the air between the ruling party and opposition lawmakers as the bill was debated in a marathon 20-hour sitting.

Ali Ihsan Kokturk, lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), got a bloodied nose in the brawl, while ruling party lawmaker Bayram Ozcelik’s finger was broken.

The opposition says the reform is a “government manoeuvre” to limit fallout from a graft probe that has ensnared top allies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“The law is an apparent indicator of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s attempt to cover the corruption investigation by redesigning the judiciary,” CHP lawmaker Aykan Aydemir told AFP.

Parliament resumed debate of the bill Friday despite an uproar from opposition parties and the international community who warned it threatened the independence of the judiciary in the European Union hopeful country.

The reform package gives the justice ministry greater sway over the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), an independent body responsible for appointing members of the judiciary.

It would change the make-up of the HSYK and give the justice minister the right to launch investigations into its members.

The measures were passed on Saturday morning with 210 votes in favour and 28 against.

CHP lawmaker Riza Turmen said his party would challenge the law, which still needs the president’s signature to come into force, before the constitutional court.

“The law is against the general spirit of the constitution that guarantees judicial independence,” he told AFP after the vote.

“HSYK is key to judicial independence. An independent judiciary is only possible with an independent HSYK.”

Last month, President Abdullah Gul stepped in to resolve the deadlock by pushing for the judicial reforms to be passed as constitutional amendments, which would require cross-party support.

But the president’s initiative failed after disagreements between ruling and opposition party lawmakers.

The reforms come with Turkey in political turmoil over the graft scandal that involves alleged bribery for construction projects as well as illegal trade with sanctions-hit Iran.

The inquiry into the allegations, launched on December 17, marks the biggest challenge yet to Erdogan’s 11-year rule ahead of March local elections.

The Turkish strongman says the probe has been instigated by political rivals, including powerful US-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen whose associates hold key positions in the police and the judiciary.

Erdogan has embarked on a series of retaliatory measures against the police, prosecution service and judiciary which he believes is using the probe to undermine him, sacking thousands of police and prosecutors.

Turkey’s parliament triggered a storm of protest at home and abroad last week after it approved restrictions to the Internet seen by opponents as an attempt by Erdogan to stifle dissent.

Some of Erdogan’s critics say the legislation is specifically aimed at preventing evidence of high-level corruption from being leaked online.

KABUL — Scores of alleged Taliban fighters walked free from jail in Afghanistan on Thursday, triggering condemnation from the United States which said they were responsible for killing NATO and Afghan soldiers as well as civilians.

The release of the prisoners further worsened the bitter relationship between Kabul and Washington as US-led foreign troops prepare to withdraw after 13 years fighting the Islamist militants.

“The 65 prisoners were freed and walked out of the Bagram prison compound this morning,” Abdul Shukor Dadras, a member of the Afghan government’s review body, told AFP.

“Their cases were reviewed and we had no reason to keep them in jail.”

The US embassy criticised the releases as “a deeply regrettable” move that could lead to further violence in Afghanistan, which has suffered a bloody Taliban insurgency since 2001.

“The Afghan government bears responsibility for the results of its decision,” the embassy said in a statement. “We urge it to make every effort to ensure that those released do not commit new acts of violence and terror.”

But President Hamid Karzai has called Bagram prison a “Taliban-producing factory” and alleged that some detainees were tortured into hating their country.

The US military described the men as “dangerous individuals” directly linked to attacks which killed or wounded 32 NATO personnel and 23 Afghans.

It gave names and details of three men to be freed, including Mohammad Wali, whom it described as a suspected Taliban explosives expert “biometrically linked” to two bombings against troops in Helmand province.

“Violent criminals who harm Afghans and threaten the peace and security of Afghanistan should face justice in the Afghan courts,” the US force said in a statement.

US aid at risk?

Plans to free the men have enraged US officials and become a focus point of strained relations as the two countries wrangle over a security deal, which would allow some American soldiers to stay in the country after 2014.

Most US and other foreign troops are scheduled to pull out this year, but a small force may stay to conduct training and counterterrorism missions.

Thursday’s prison releases could threaten essential funding for Afghanistan as US lawmakers become increasingly frustrated at Kabul’s antagonistic approach to its biggest aid donor.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen also criticised the decision, which he said was “a major step backwards for the rule of law in Afghanistan and poses serious security concerns”.

Afghan officials say the Bagram detainees have been held, often for years, without being charged or brought to trial, and that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute them.

The prison, 50 kilometres north of Kabul, was the main detention centre housing Taliban and other insurgents captured by Western military forces until it was transferred to Afghan control last year.

The fate of the remaining detainees had been a running sore for Karzai, who sees the jail as a symbol of Afghanistan’s efforts to regain its national sovereignty.

Some analysts believe the Afghan government hopes that the releases could help kick-start moribund peace talks with the Taliban, who were ousted from power in 2001.

Lieutenant General Ghulam Farouq, head of the military police that runs Bagram jail, told AFP the prisoners “got into cars and headed off to their homes”.

“We freed them and it’s up to them how they left. We didn’t prepare transport for them,” he added.

Karzai was in Turkey on Thursday to met Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, with efforts to start negotiations with the insurgents likely to be high on the agenda.

Karzai, who is due to step down after presidential elections on April 5, is pushing for neighbouring Pakistan to help start a peace process before NATO troops withdraw.

The Afghan president made a surprise decision late last year not to sign the security deal with the US that would allow about 10,000 troops to stay after this year, although negotiations on the agreement continue.

A similar deal with Iraq collapsed in 2011 leading to a complete US troop pullout, and the country is now in the grip of worsening sectarian violence.

WASHINGTON — A major storm packing heavy snow and ice plowed into the eastern United States Thursday, leaving at least 10 dead, widespread road accidents and hundreds of thousands of people without power.

The storm wrapped Washington DC in deep, fluffy snow, closing much of the federal government and blotted visibility in New York City, which braced for a treacherous commute.

“Because of its timing and intensity, this storm is going to make both the morning and evening rush hours extremely difficult,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday night.

Forecasts predicted 20.3cm to 35.6cm in the city.

Thousands of travellers were stranded as flights, including at major air hubs in Atlanta and New York, were cancelled, and nearly 800,000 homes and businesses lost power, mainly in Georgia, and North and South Carolina.

The latest brutal freeze to hammer the eastern states of the country since the start of the year has been dubbed “snowmaggedon”, “mind-boggling” and “historic” by major television networks and forecasters.

CNN put the overall death toll at least 10. CBS News said that at least 11 deaths had been blamed on the ferocious conditions.

As the storm moved north, the US National Weather Service warned that the “mammoth dome” of Arctic air would cut a wide swath of winter weather from Georgia to New England.

Moisture from the Atlantic “will continue to fuel widespread precipitation”, it said.

Sleet and freezing rain were expected to set up along I-95, the major interstate highway that runs the length of the eastern seaboard.

“This storm is dangerous,” said North Carolina governor Pat McCrory. “Road conditions are treacherous in many areas.”

Massive traffic jams from snow slicked roads made evening commutes in the South agonising, hours-long affairs with the usually temperate cities of Raleigh and Charlotte transformed into ice- and snow-covered parking lots.

Hundreds of traffic accidents were reported in the Carolinas and Georgia, where frozen roads hampered emergency response efforts.

Earlier, President Barack Obama had declared states of emergency in Georgia and South Carolina in order to deploy federal resources to help deal with the frigid storm.

North Carolina’s McCrory urged residents to stay indoors — even if it meant sleeping at work — rather than risk the treacherous roads.

“If you’re in a safe warm place, stay in a safe warm place,” McCrory told CNN.

“We’ve already had two fatalities and we don’t want to see more.”

Flights badly hit

Specialty website FlightAware said airlines cancelled at least 3,700 flights on Wednesday and had already shelved 5,500 for Thursday, including many flights to and from New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington.

The US capital’s downtown was a virtual ghost town Thursday morning. Most buses were not running and subway cars nearly empty.

As the snow started blowing in overnight, temperatures hovered around -3oC but the bracing winds making it feel more like -9.4oC, forecasters said.

The White House cancelled its daily news briefing and federal agencies told workers to stay home.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was in contact with state emergency offices in densely populated Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia to assess their assistance needs as the storm builds.

In addition to the FEMA aid, various localities across the region had readied emergency shelters at churches and recreation centres where residents could stay warm should they lose power.

The severe weather has also been playing havoc with US businesses and governments’ bottom line.

Payrolls firm ADP said last week that the wintry onslaught has taken a toll on job growth.

Oil prices, by contrast, have been propelled higher by the extra-cold weather and succession of winter storms.

WASHINGTON — After Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Ukraine last July, US diplomats got a private recap of the message he delivered behind closed doors to the country’s leaders. Ukraine, Putin warned, would not be allowed to stray from Moscow’s orbit.

Putin’s blunt talk was an unexpected sign of how hard Moscow would fight Western influence on Ukraine, US officials say, prompting Washington and European capitals to step up their engagement with the Ukrainian government and opposition forces.

Seven months later, the United States and Russia are locked in a Cold War-style test of wills over the strategically located country of 45 million that has been racked by anti-government protests and sporadic violence.

US-Russia tensions and mutual accusations of meddling are making it more difficult to find a solution in Ukraine, where the US fears violence may escalate, and is one of the clearest signs yet that US President Barack Obama has made scant progress improving relations with Washington’s former adversary.

In Ukraine, former US officials and analysts say, Russia holds most of the cards, including close proximity, energy supplies that Kiev depends on and a promised $15 billion bailout it has used to woo Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich away from an EU trade deal.

Obama, reluctant to act assertively in what Russia has long considered its sphere of influence, has limited direct leverage and few good options.

But Washington has decided to use the Ukraine crisis to take a stand, at least diplomatically, against what the White House regards as a “worrying and troubling” pattern of Russian behavior toward its neighbors, a senior US official said.

“Ukraine is going to be a test” of improved US-Russian relations, said the official, who was not authorised to talk publicly. The administration has a realistic understanding of what is possible with Russia, after early enthusiasm about the possibility of working together. “We understand the shape and the dimensions of the Russia we’re dealing with, and it makes it tougher to find that cooperation.”

The more activist American policy was unintentionally on display last week in the leaked secret recording of a phone conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt.

The two are heard speaking intensely about the formation of an interim, reform-minded government and treating Moscow like an adversary. “You can be pretty sure that if [a deal for a new government] does start to gain altitude the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it,” Pyatt says.

US officials have not directly blamed the leak on Russia, which has denied its involvement. But the audio clip was first posted on Twitter by Dmitry Loskutov, an aide to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, a diplomatic source said.

The leak also revealed US-European tensions over how assertive to be in the crisis, with Nuland dismissing what American officials regard as the EU’s cautious approach with profanity.

US officials say the damage to trans-Atlantic relations was fleeting and that polls taken in the days since show a rise in Ukrainians’ approval of the United States.

The ‘reset’ button is off

The officials say they are trying to avoid any direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine and despite veiled threats from Moscow see little chance of Russian military intervention there.

But privately, some describe Putin’s determination to keep Ukraine in Moscow’s orbit in stark terms, worrying it suggests a desire to redraw European borders and reopen agreements reached after the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse.

Obama’s attempt to “reset” relations with Russia in his first term, while it had some successes including a new nuclear arms reduction deal and cooperation on Afghanistan, never produced enduring trust.

Washington and Moscow are at loggerheads over Syria, where Russia backs President Bashar Al Assad. The two countries are also at odds over Putin’s crackdown on internal dissent and US missile defense plans, which Russia feels threatens its national security. The relationship was further strained when Russia granted asylum to former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked classified documents that have caused both security concerns and political problems for Obama.

Obama, in a joint White House news conference with French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday, took a swipe at Moscow for what he said was its blocking of measures to help starving civilians in Syria’s three-year-old civil war.

For the Sochi Winter Olympics, which Putin is touting as a major milestone in Russia’s post-Soviet revival, senior US officials stayed home. Obama’s delegation contained prominent gay American athletes, a diplomatic rebuke to Russian laws such as one that bans so-called gay propaganda.

Thomas Graham, who was senior Russia adviser to President George W. Bush, said the Obama administration is trying to show friends and foes that it is relevant in Eastern Europe at a time when US-Russia relations have deteriorated.

“The administration felt that it had to stand up and show that it had a spine on these issues,” Graham said.

But he and others said the United States is not in a strong position to influence the outcome of the Ukrainian crisis.

“The strength of motivation is on the Russian side,” said Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Ukraine now at the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank.

“It’s a hard problem”, Pifer said. If the United States and EU promised cash-strapped Ukraine $15 billion, “Putin would say fine, here’s $25 billion. He’s in a position to outbid us on this one.”

US officials say they have levers of their own. Brussels and Washington have tried to sway Yanukovich with a trade deal with the EU, the world’s largest market, and promises of billions of dollars in International Monetary Fund loans if Ukraine undertakes economic reforms.

Yanukovich is under pressure from street demonstrators, many of whom want Ukraine to have a European, not Russian, orientation.

Although Europeans are unenthusiastic, the US government is also considering expanding sanctions against individuals responsible for violence against the protesters who have occupied Kiev’s Maidan square since late November.

No country in six months?

The protests have spread from Kiev to other parts of the country. US engagement accelerated after the crisis turned deadly on January 22, current and former US officials, and a congressional aide said.

Nuland met Yanukovich in Kiev late last week to urge a de-escalation of tensions and constitutional reforms, reflecting US fears that Ukraine could be engulfed in countrywide civil unrest if the crisis is not solved.

The US diplomat is said to have replied to Yanukovich’s proposal for a six-month time frame to study constitutional reforms by warning him that, in six months, he might not have a country to govern.

This is an argument that Washington is also making to Russia as it seeks to overcome Putin’s view of Ukraine as a zero-sum game in which Kiev’s greater economic engagement with the West can only come at Moscow’s expense.

US officials fear, however it will fall on deaf ears. Putin sees Ukraine as crucial to his dream of a Eurasian customs union to rival the EU and the United States.

“Putin lays out an agenda for wanting to sit at the table with the other great powers” but then reverts to “throwback” policies toward former Soviet satellites, the senior US official said. “The Russian leadership wants to have its cake and eat it too.”

ATLANTA — A deadly winter storm brought heavy snow, freezing rain and a possibly historic accumulation of ice to the southeastern United States on Wednesday, causing hundreds of thousands of power outages and treacherous driving conditions, meterologists said.

The worsening storm stretched from eastern Texas to the Carolinas and was likely to reach the Middle Atlantic states by late Wednesday, National Weather Service meteorologist Roger Edwards said.

Power outages spread rapidly as temperatures dropped.

More than 110,000 Georgia Power customers were without electricity on Wednesday, with most outages reported in metropolitan Atlanta. Some customers may have to wait up to a week for power to be restored, said Georgia Power spokeswoman Amy Fink.

“It does appear that the storm could have an even greater impact than we originally had predicted,” she said.

The wintry mix had already caused two weather-related traffic deaths in Mississippi and three in northern Texas earlier in the week, authorities said. The state Highway Patrol in South Carolina had responded to 273 weather-related calls for service overnight.

Nearly 3,000 US flights were cancelled and hundreds more delayed early on Wednesday, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.com.

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta was hardest hit, with more than 800, or 69 per cent of flights, cancelled, FlightAware.com said. Delta Air Lines and AirTran, the two dominant carriers there, had the most cancellations as of Wednesday morning.

“Atlanta is all but shut down. None of our approximately 155 departures scheduled for today is operating,” said spokesman Brad Hawkins of Southwest Airlines, which operates AirTran.

Up to 2 cm of ice was expected in a broad section of Georgia, including metropolitan Atlanta. Some areas could see more than 2.5 cm.

The Interstate 20 corridor from north central and northeastern Georgia into South Carolina would be among the hardest hit by icy conditions, said meteorologist Edwards.

Snowfall totals were expected to be unusually high in the region, with nearly 20.3 cm forecast for Charlotte, North Carolina and 22.9 cm for Spartanburg, South Carolina. Parts of the state, from the mountains to the coast, had already seen heavy snowfall.

“It is going to be a tough 48 hours,” said North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, noting that toppled trees and downed power lines were likely to create hazardous travel conditions.

Edward Clay, 40, who lives in Greer, South Carolina, decided against driving to Asheville, North Carolina, for his job as a construction project superintendent, even though snow flurries were just beginning.

“I could get to Asheville easy,” he said. “Getting back to South Carolina is the problem. It’s going to be an all-around bad day to be on the road.”

Government officials were quick to make plans to deal with the impact of the storm, following another two weeks ago that paralysed Atlanta-area roads and forced more than 11,000 students in Alabama to spend the night at their schools.

Hundreds of schools and government offices across the South were closed on Wednesday, and shelters were opened in Georgia and Alabama to help those stranded by the storm.

Conditions deteriorated overnight as a swath of the Deep South, from Alabama through South Carolina, was deluged with rain, sleet and snow, Edwards said.

A tractor-trailer carrying milk jack-knifed on Interstate 285 around Atlanta early on Wednesday, said state transportation department spokeswoman Natalie Dale.

Overall, the traffic volume was light.

“People really seem to be heeding the warnings and staying off the roads,” Dale added.

The last significant ice storm in Georgia was in January 2000, when up to 1.3 cm of ice left more than 350,000 people without power, weather service meteorologist Dan Darbe said.

With the latest storm, “we’re talking a much larger area and a much larger amount of ice”, he said.

Winter storm watches reached into the Northeast, where heavy snow and possible ice was expected as the storm moved up the eastern seaboard on Thursday.