Biden pledges support for Ukraine’s leaders
KIEV: Vice President Joe Biden said the United States stood by Ukraine’s new pro-Western leaders yesterday in the face of ‘ humiliating threats’ as Washington and Moscow traded blame over the crisis in the exSoviet country.
“You face very daunting problems, and some might say, humiliating threats,” Biden told a group of lawmakers in a meeting at Ukraine’s parliament.
The US would ‘ stand with’ Ukraine ahead of a presidential poll scheduled for May 25 that “may be the most important election in Ukrainian history,” he said.
Biden’s symbolic two-day visit to Kiev came as US officials said that the onus was firmly on Moscow to fulfill an accord struck last week aimed at reducing tensions in the worst East-West confrontation since the Cold War.
Under the deal signed by Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union in Geneva, all militias in the country were supposed to disarm and give up control over seized state property.
Washington and Kiev have put the onus on pro-Kremlin militants holding buildings in the east, while Moscow said the responsibility fell to pro-Western nationalists camping out in Kiev.
The split over Ukraine was on display in a crunch phone call between American and Russian diplomatic chiefs, with each side putting a radically different spin on the conversation aimed at reviving the Geneva accord.
US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Moscow to put pressure on the pro- Russian separatists, which Washington sees as backed
You face very daunting problems, and some might say, humiliating threats. Joe Biden, Vice President
by the Kremlin.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Washington to influence the Ukrainian government, which Moscow accuses of ‘grossly breaching’ the Geneva deal. Kerry told Lavrov that ‘concrete steps’ to defuse the crisis should include “publicly calling on separatists to vacate illegal buildings and checkpoints, accept amnesty and address their grievances politically”, said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
US ambassador to Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt told journalists Monday that “the ball is really in Moscow’s court” over making the agreement work and said Washington would take “days not weeks” to assess the implementation of the accord.
In Moscow, the foreign ministry said Lavrov had asked Kerry to “pressure Kiev to stop hotheads from provoking a bloody conflict and to encourage the Ukrainian authorities to strictly fulfil their obligations”.
Lavrov also accused Ukraine’s government of an “inability and unwillingness” to rein in Pravy Sektor (‘Right Sector’), an ultranationalist group the separatists blamed for a deadly attack Sunday on one of their checkpoints near the flashpoint town of Slavyansk.
Funerals of at least two proMoscow rebels killed in the gunbattle were set to take place in the town Tuesday in an emotive ceremony that could stoke additional anger in the east.
US President Barack Obama has threatened more sanctions on Moscow if the Geneva accord is not implemented soon, beyond those already imposed by the United States and the European Union.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that Washington was ready to make good on its threat, warning that “if progress is not made in coming days we will impose further costs”. — AFP