World

BRUSSELS — NATO’s foreign ministers ordered an end to civilian and military cooperation with Russia on Tuesday and told their generals and admirals to quickly figure out ways to better protect alliance members that feel threatened by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.

The 28-member alliance, the keystone of US and European security since the end of World War II, was reacting to its most serious crisis in years: Russia’s unilateral annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which the US and its allies have condemned as an illegal landgrab.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and the other ministers, meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels behind closed doors, unanimously agreed Tuesday on a number of measures. A civilian NATO official who attended the meeting and briefed reporters afterward on condition of anonymity said the steps included:

— The suspension of “all practical civilian and military cooperation” between NATO and Russia. NATO officials said ambassadorial-level contacts will remain open to assure a reliable channel of communication.

— The possible deployment and reinforcement of military assets in eastern NATO members, such as Poland and the Baltic states, that feel menaced by Moscow’s latest actions.

— A possible increase of readiness levels for the NATO rapid response force.

— A possible review of NATO’s crisis response plans, as well as its military training and exercise schedules.

NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Phil Breedlove and his subordinates will draw up the proposals within a few weeks and then submit them to political leaders for their approval, the NATO official said.

To reassure alliance members closest to Russia and Ukraine, NATO already has stepped up air patrols over the Baltic Sea and AWACS surveillance flights over Poland and Romania.

Prior to the meeting, the chief of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation downplayed reports of a Russian troop withdrawal from areas along its border with Ukraine. Russia’s defence ministry on Monday said one battalion — about 500 troops — had pulled back.

“This is not what we have seen,” NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters Tuesday. “And this massive military buildup can in no way contribute to a de-escalation of the situation — a de-escalation that we all want to see — so I continue to urge Russia to pull back its troops, live up to its international obligation and engage in a constructive dialogue with Ukraine.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking to reporters in Berlin, echoed those comments.

“[Even if some troops left] it’s certainly not the final step,” she said. “The [Russian] troop concentration on the Ukrainian border is very high.”

An estimated 35,000 to 40,000 Russian troops equipped with tanks, other armoured vehicles and fixed and rotary wing aircraft remained positioned near the border with Ukraine, a NATO military official told The Associated Press on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.

The official described the Russian buildup as “a complete combat force” that was highly threatening to Ukraine.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, who was meeting with his NATO counterparts, planned to speak to reporters later in the day.

In other developments, Russia sharply hiked the price for natural gas to Ukraine and threatened to reclaim billions in previous discounts, raising the heat on Ukraine’s cash-strapped government. In Kiev, Ukrainian police moved to disarm members of a radical nationalist group after a shooting spree in the capital.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier renewed a push for internationally backed direct talks between Russia and Ukraine.

“What will be important in the coming days is getting Russia and Ukraine around a table together,” Steinmeier said at a meeting with his French and Polish counterparts in Weimar, Germany, before heading to Brussels.

Despite annexing Crimea, Putin and other Kremlin officials have said that Russia has no intention of invading other areas of Ukraine. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu insisted Tuesday the Kremlin wants a “political settlement that would take interests and rights of the entire Ukrainian people into account.”

KUALA LUMPUR/PERTH — The last words from the cockpit of a missing Malaysian jet were a standard “Good night Malaysian three seven zero”, Malaysian authorities said, changing their account of the critical last communication from a more casual “All right, good night”.

Malaysia on Tuesday released the full transcript of communications between the Boeing 777 and local air traffic control before it dropped from civilian radar in the early hours of March 8 as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The correction comes as Malaysian authorities face heavy criticism, particularly from China, for mismanaging the search, now in its fourth fruitless week, and holding back information. Most of the 239 people on board the flight were Chinese.

“There is no indication of anything abnormal in the transcript,” Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said in the statement, without giving explanation for the changes in the reported last communication.

“The transcript was initially held as part of the police investigation,” he added.

Minutes after the final radio transmission was received the plane’s communications were cut off, and it turned back across Peninsular Malaysia and headed towards the Indian Ocean, according to military radar and limited satellite data.

The search is now focused on a vast, inhospitable swathe of the southern Indian Ocean west of the Australian city of Perth, but an international team of planes and ships have so far failed to spot any sign of the jetliner.

“In this case, the last known position was a long, long way from where the aircraft appears to have gone,” retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the Australian agency coordinating the operation, told reporters in Perth.

“It’s very complex, it’s very demanding and we don’t have hard information like we might normally have,” he said.

Malaysia says the plane was likely diverted deliberately, probably by a skilled aviator, leading to speculation of involvement by one or more of the pilots. Investigators, however, have determined no apparent motive or other red flags among the 227 passengers and 12 crew.

The transcript, issued on Tuesday, and shared with families of the passengers and crew, covers about 55 minutes of apparently routine conversation, beginning about quarter of an hour before take-off.

The last exchange took place at 1:19am (1719 GMT). Nothing appeared to be wrong, as Malaysian air traffic controllers told the pilots they were entering Vietnamese air space and received a fairly standard sign-off with call sign in reply.

Air Traffic Control: “Malaysian Three Seven Zero contact Ho Chi Minh 120 decimal 9, good night.”

MH370: “Good night, Malaysian Three Seven Zero.”

“Previously, Malaysia Airlines had stated initial investigations indicated that the voice which signed off was that of the co-pilot,” Transport Minister Hishammuddin said in the statement.

“The police are working to confirm this belief and forensic examination of the actual recording is on-going.”

Malaysia’s ambassador to China had told Chinese families in Beijing as early as March 12 that the last words from the cockpit had been “All right, good night”, which experts said was more informal than called for by standard radio procedures.

Search goes on

Nine ships and 10 aircraft resumed the hunt for wreckage from MH370 on Tuesday, hoping to recover more than the fishing gear and other flotsam found since Australian authorities moved the search 1,100km north after new analysis of radar and satellite data.

Houston said the challenging search, in an area the size of Ireland, would continue based on the imperfect information with which they had to work.

“But, inevitably, if we don’t find any wreckage on the surface, we are eventually going to have to, probably in consultation with everybody who has a stake in this, review what to do next,” he said.

Using faint, hourly satellite signals gathered by British firm Inmarsat PLC and radar data from early in its flight, investigators have only estimates of the speed the aircraft was travelling and no certainty of its altitude, Houston said.

Satellite imagery of the new search area had not given “anything better than low confidence of finding anything”, said Mick Kinley, another search official in Perth.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak will travel to Perth late on Wednesday to see the operation first hand. He was expected to meet Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Thursday.

Among the vessels due to join the search in the coming days is an Australian defence force ship, the Ocean Shield, that has been fitted with a sophisticated US black box locator and an underwater drone.

Time is running out because the signal transmitted by the missing aircraft’s black box will die about 30 days after a crash due to limited battery life, leaving investigators with a vastly more difficult task. 

LONDON — The Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in Britain will be reviewed over concerns about possible links to violence, Prime Minister David Cameron said, widening pressure on a veteran Islamist movement facing an intensifying crackdown in the Arab world.

The Brotherhood, and affiliated organisations and parties are part of the political landscape in many Arab and Islamic states where they have placed deep roots in society thanks to their involvement in social and charitable works.

It also gained political power in some Arab nations after the 2011 uprisings that toppled long-entrenched autocratic regimes. But the Brotherhood has been crushed in Egypt after the military overthrew an elected Islamist president in July, declared a terrorist organisation in Saudi Arabia, and subjected to a wave of prosecutions and jailings in Gulf Arab kingdoms leery of any spread of Islamist influence since the Arab Spring.

Britain, where many Brotherhood-influenced organisations are based, said its review would include looking at allegations made by authoritarian Arab leaders that the group was linked to violence, a charge it has repeatedly denied.

“What is important... is to make sure we fully understand what this organisation is, what it stands for, what its links are, what its beliefs are in terms of both extremism and violent extremism, what its connections are with other groups, what its presence is here in the United Kingdom,” Cameron told reporters.

A spokeswoman for Cameron said the review would examine the philosophies and values of the Muslim Brotherhood and how it operated in different countries around the world, including in the UK, as well as its impact on Britain’s national security.

Both the British domestic and foreign intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, would be consulted as part of the review, she added, which would focus on the activities of the Brotherhood in the wider region, not Egypt alone.

“There have been some concerns as well that have been raised about potential linkages to violent activity and some extremist groups of some of the organisations that tend to come together under the wider Muslim Brotherhood organisation,” another spokesman said. Therefore the review would look at “alleged and reported links to extremist organisations”.

The government hopes the review, being led by John Jenkins, its ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will report findings by July.

In Cairo, Foreign Ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said: “Egypt welcomes Britain’s decision in carrying out urgent investigations into the role the Muslim Brotherhood group carries out from British soil and the extent of the relationship between the... Brotherhood and violent activities and extremism.”

The Muslim Brotherhood Press Office in London, which has become the movement’s main communication channel since July, said it would release a statement later on Monday.

“I think there’s a definite linkage between Cameron’s announcement of investigation of the Brotherhood in the UK to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf state perceptions of the Brotherhood as a threat,” said Theodore Karasik, director of research and consultancy at the Gulf security and military think-tank INEGMA.

“The pressure point is related to the fact that an event [can] occur on the Arabian Peninsula that is tied to the Brotherhood and originates in the UK,” he told Reuters.

Egypt shatters Brotherhood

Britain’s move came amid increasing Arab repression of the Brotherhood especially in Egypt, where security forces have killed hundreds of Islamists and jailed thousands including almost all leaders of the movement since the army ousted President Mohamed Morsi after mass protests against his rule.

The military-backed authorities have banned the Brotherhood and more than 500 members have been sentenced to death for murder over deaths during clashes with security forces. Morsi faces charges that could lead to the death penalty.

The Brotherhood has reiterated a decades-long policy of non-violence, denying any connection with recent bloodshed.

Analysts say Morsi, a leading Brotherhood figure, alienated all but a hard-core constituency by devoting his energy to asserting Islamist control of Egypt’s governing institutions rather than implementing civic-minded policies to revive its paralysed economy and heal political divisions.

Still, in the wake of Morsi’s removal Britain’s Foreign Office voiced concern over the collective round-up of Brotherhood members, warning that politicised arrests would hinder Egypt’s post-2011 transition towards democracy.

Saudi Arabia, a staunch supporter of the military-buttressed governing authorities in Egypt, formally designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation last month.

Riyadh fears that the group, whose Sunni Islamist doctrines challenge the Saudi principle of dynastic rule, has tried to build support in the kingdom since the Arab Spring revolutions.

ANKARA — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan looked a step closer to a presidential bid and to gaining the upper hand in a bitter power struggle on Monday, casting strong local election results as a mandate to hunt down enemies within the state “in their lair”.

His AK Party swept the electoral map in Sunday’s polls, retaining control of the two biggest cities Istanbul and Ankara and increasing its share of the national vote as his pugnacious leadership style, beloved by a loyal, conservative voter base, trumped a stream of corruption allegations and security leaks.

From a balcony at AKP headquarters at the end of a long and bitter election that became a referendum on his rule, Erdogan told thousands of cheering supporters that his enemies in politics and the state, whom he has labelled “traitors”, “terrorists” and “an alliance of evil”, would pay the price.

“We will enter their lair,” he said, before a huge firework display lit up Ankara’s midnight sky. “They will be brought to account. How can you threaten national security?”

The harsh tone of his balcony address suggested he felt he now had a mandate for strong action against his enemies. “From tomorrow, there may be some who flee,” he said.

The election campaign has been dominated by a power struggle between Erdogan and US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of using a network of followers in the police and judiciary to fabricate graft smears in an effort to topple him.

Erdogan, who has long drawn support from the same Muslim professional class that reveres Gulen, has purged thousands of police officers and hundreds of judges and prosecutors since anti-graft raids in December targeted businessmen close to the premier as well as the sons of some government ministers.

Investors, who have been unnerved by the turbulence, took solace in the election result, seeing it as a sign of political continuity. The lira rallied to its strongest in two months and stocks hit a three-month high.

“From a market perspective, the election result appears to be more or less what the doctor ordered: a solid win for the AKP which shores up the position of Turkey’s ruling party,” said Nicholas Spiro, head of Spiro Sovereign Strategy.

The main opposition CHP said it would challenge the result in Ankara, which was a particularly close race. But no major changes were expected in a nationwide tally which put the AKP on some 45.6 per cent with almost all the votes counted, a robust increase on its 39 per cent share at local elections in 2009.

Presidential ambition

Erdogan has made no secret of his ambition to become Turkey’s first directly elected president in an August ballot, but the feud with Gulen, the corruption allegations and street protests last summer had all raised questions over how easily he would secure a majority in the first round.

“Of course this has reinforced Erdogan’s bid for the presidential polls,” one source close to the government said of Sunday’s election result. “He was in need of a vote of confidence, both from the people and for those who have been critical of him within the party.”

A senior government official concurred, saying there were now “no obstacles before him” on the road to the presidency, although the official said rooting out Gulen’s influence within the state would remain Erdogan’s priority. He could, instead, choose to run for a fourth term as premier in a parliamentary election next year in order to finish off that battle.

“Erdogan is certainly much closer to the presidency,” the official said. “But he makes his own agenda. Very soon he will begin his assessment of what needs to be done together with the party’s ruling echelons.”

The crisis reached a new level at the end of last week when a recording of a top-secret meeting of security officials about possible intervention in Syria was posted anonymously on YouTube. The action, for which Gulen denies any responsibility, raised serious concern about government control of its own security apparatus and speculation about further damaging leaks.

“The prime minister takes this extremely seriously,” the source close to the government said. “Such a structure can not be allowed within the state and before he makes a move for the presidential bid he needs to make sure that these people will be carved out of the state institutions.”

‘Buried at the ballot box’

Erdogan, lacking trained personnel loyal to himself, filled government departments with Gulen supporters when he first was elected in 2002. Gulen, who runs a huge network of schools and businesses, is widely credited with having helped Erdogan break the political power of the armed forces using allies in the police and judiciary.

But in recent years friction has grown between the two men and came to a head when Erdogan moved to curb Gulen’s influence and close the schools that are a key source of income and influence.

He now seems likely to step up his drive against Gulen.

“Let me tell you, Erdogan’s response is coming,” said Tesev think tank chairman, Can Paker, seen as close to Erdogan.

“He will harshly and fully clean up the police and judiciary. And he will purge the press that supported the leaks. He will most certainly do that. He will say ‘I was elected to eliminate them’. He is not going to soften.”

The authorities have already begun an espionage investigation following the leaked Syria recording, and on Monday the Cihan news agency and the Zaman newspaper — both affiliated to Gulen — claimed they had come under “cyber attack” during their election night coverage.

Pro-government newspapers heaped scorn on Erdogan’s opponents, with one, Yeni Safak, showing pictures of opposition leaders and Gulen under the headline “Buried at the Ballot Box”.

“It’s already clear from his speech this evening that he’s basically threatening society,” said Gursel Tekin, CHP Vice President. “This shows his state of mind isn’t to be trusted, and these obvious threats are not something that we can accept.”

SIMFEROPOL, Crimea — Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev flaunted Russia’s grip on Crimea by flying to the region and holding a government meeting there on Monday, angering Ukraine and defying Western demands to hand the peninsula back to Kiev.

The Ukrainian government denounced the visit, a few hours after the latest round of crisis talks between Russia and the United States ended inconclusively, as a “crude violation” of the rules of diplomacy.

Russia said it had pulled some troops back from near Ukraine’s eastern border, a move that could ease tension in the worst East-West standoff since the Cold War. The defence ministry said a motorised infantry battalion was being withdrawn from the region. A battalion numbers between 300 and 1,200 men.

However, Medvedev’s visit taunted Western leaders by underlining their inability to force President Vladimir Putin to relinquish Crimea, seized after the overthrow of Russian-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and annexed on March 21.

Accompanying Medvedev, outspoken Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin — targeted by Western sanctions — left no doubt about the symbolism of the trip, saying on Twitter: “Crimea is ours. Basta!”

Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed by telephone ways of stabilising Ukraine and another former Soviet Republic, Moldova. A Kremlin statement quoted Putin as calling for a comprehensive solution that would end what he called a “blockade” on Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniestria.

Soon after landing in Crimea’s main city of Simferopol with many members of his Cabinet, Medvedev held a government meeting attended by Crimean leaders and outlined moves to revive the region’s struggling economy.

“Our aim is to make the peninsula as attractive as possible to investors, so that it can generate sufficient income for its own development. There are opportunities for this — we have taken everything into consideration,” he said, sitting at a large desk with Russian flags behind him.

“And so we have decided to create a special economic zone here. This will allow for the use of special tax and customs regimes in Crimea, and also minimise administrative procedures,” he told the meeting, broadcast live on Russian state television.

In comments that made clear Russia had no plans to give back the region, he set out moves to increase wages for some 140,000 state workers in Crimea, boost pensions, turn the region into a tourism hub, protect energy links, end reliance on Ukraine for water and improve its roads, railways and airports.

The visit appeared aimed to cement and celebrate Moscow’s acquisition of Crimea, which has a narrow ethnic Russian majority and was transferred from Russia to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.

No agreement at talks

Ukraine sent a protest note to Moscow over Medvedev’s trip, declaring that “the visit of an official person to the territory of another state without preliminary agreement is a crude violation of the rules of the international community.”

Medvedev landed in Simferopol hours after US Secretary of State John Kerry met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Paris late on Sunday and reiterated that Washington considered Russia’s actions in Crimea “illegal and illegitimate”.

Kerry said resolving the crisis over Ukraine depended on a Russian troop pullback from Ukraine’s borders. The United States has put the number near the eastern border at up to 40,000.

Russia has described the troop buildup as part of war games. Ukrainian Major-General Oleksandr Rozmaznin, told journalists in Kiev that the number of troops near the border had been reduced but that might just reflect a scheduled rotation of conscripts.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the slight reduction in troop numbers was a small signal that the border situation was becoming less tense.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Russian officials since a March 16 referendum in which Crimea voted for union with Russia. The West says the vote was a sham as Russian forces had taken control of the region.

Russia has shrugged off the sanctions, though the absorption of Crimea and its two million residents creates a new financial burden as Russia struggles with slow growth, rising inflation, a weak currency and unusually high capital flight this year.

Medvedev indicated he hoped Crimea, which he said had “colossal prospects” for tourism income, would become self-sufficient.

A senior local economic official said the impoverished Black Sea peninsula hopes for an economic leap forward with large-scale investments, state subsidies and tax breaks from Moscow.

“We have underdeveloped infrastructure and poor people. Now all this has just come to an end and we will finally start dynamic development,” Rustam Temirgaliyev, Crimea’s first deputy prime minister, told Reuters.

The Crimean economy generates some $4 billion a year but is highly dependent on energy supplies from Ukraine and suffered widespread blackouts last week, which Temirgaliyev denounced as a plot by Kiev.

Boosting the local economy and tourism faces big obstacles, not least a decision by the European Union this month to impose heavy tariffs on goods from the annexed region.

Of the six to eight million tourists a year who visited Crimea before Moscow intervened, more than 60 per cent were from Ukraine, many who came by train on state-funded holidays for public sector workers, and only one-quarter from Russia.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said last week that Russia would spend up to 243 billion roubles ($6.82 billion) in Crimea this year, to be financed from the budget reserve.

The ultimate cost of its action in Crimea is likely to be far higher: analysts in a Reuters poll last week slashed their forecasts for Russian economic growth.

Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, has an estimated 55-billion-rouble budget deficit, and has relied on Ukraine for 85 per cent of its electricity, 90 per  cent of its drinking water and much of its food.

Its biggest industry is tourism as one of the former Soviet Union’s few warm seaside resorts but making it an attractive destination for Russians will be more difficult, since most travel by air and have a wider choice of holiday destinations.

Crimea would have to compete with Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece and Egypt, as well as Russia’s own brand new $50 billion Black Sea Olympic resort in Sochi.

A young woman in Simferopol who gave her name only as Yulia welcomed Medvedev’s visit: “It’s always good when top figures pay us visits because they usually bring money and this is what we need.” 

SEOUL — North Korea fired more than 100 artillery rounds into South Korean waters as part of a drill on Monday, prompting the South to fire back, officials in Seoul said, but the exercise appeared to be more sabre rattling from Pyongyang rather than the start of a military standoff.

The North had flagged its intentions to conduct the exercise in response to UN condemnation of last week’s missile launches by Pyongyang and against what it says are threatening military drills in the South by US forces.

North Korea also accused the South of “gangster-like” behaviour at the weekend by “abducting” one of its fishing boats and threatened to retaliate. The South said it had sent the boat back after it drifted into its waters.

More than 100 North Korean shells out of 500 or so fired landed in South Korean waters, prompting marines from the South to fire back with more than 300 rounds into the North’s waters, defence officials in Seoul said.

Seoul also scrambled F-15s on its side of the maritime border, they said.

“We believe the North’s maritime firing is a planned provocation and an attempt to test our military’s determination to defend the Northern Limit Line and to get an upper hand in South-North relations,” South Korean defence ministry spokesman, Kim Min-seok, said.

In Washington, the White House called North Korea’s actions “dangerous and provocative” and said the country’s threats and provocations only isolate it further.

“We remain steadfast in our commitment [to] the defence of our allies and remain in close coordination with both the Republic of Korea and Japan,” White House National Security Council spokesman Jonathan Lalley said.

The Northern Limit Line, a maritime border that wraps itself around a part of the North’s coastline, has been the scene of frequent clashes and in 2010, four people were killed when North Korea shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong.

“It’s up to the two militaries either to recognise or reject their own claimed line, and challenge the other’s. This goes back and forth, so this is probably another episode of that,” said Daniel Pinkston of the International Crisis Group.

Earlier in 2010, a South Korean naval vessel was sunk close to the line by what an international commission said was a North Korean torpedo, although the North denies involvement.

The line was drawn up at the end of the 1950-53 Korean war and North Korea does not recognise it. The two sides are still technically at war as the conflict ended in a mere truce, not a treaty.

The residents of Baengnyeong Island, one of the remote islands close to the firing area, were evacuated to bomb shelters as a precaution, a government official said by telephone.

North Korea has ratcheted up its rhetoric in recent weeks and conducted a series of missile launches, mostly short range, in response to what it sees as the threat posed by a series of joint US-South Korean military drills that are held annually.

The current drill called Foal Eagle ends on April 18.

“At a time that South Korea and the United States are conducting military exercises using sophisticated equipment, the North is unlikely to be reckless enough to do anything that will lead to a sharp worsening of the situation,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

“There is an element of trying to show displeasure at the South Korea-US drills and to pressure the South, but it doesn’t seem the North wants this to blow up into something bigger.”

China, which hosted several rounds of now-defunct multilateral talks aimed at ending the North’s nuclear weapons programme, nevertheless said it was concerned at the exchange of fire and called for restraint from both sides.

“The temperature is rising at present on the Korean Peninsula, and this worries us,” foreign ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said in Beijing.

He added that China was also concerned by the North’s threat to carry out more nuclear tests.

North Korea threatened nuclear strikes against the South and the United States last year after the United Nations tightened sanctions against it for conducting its third nuclear test.

Financial markets in South Korea were unmoved by the latest developments, with the stock market’s benchmark KOSPI turning higher from early losses to finish up 0.2 per cent and the won extending gains to end onshore trade up 0.4 per cent against the dollar.

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak will visit Australia to witness the race-against-time bid to locate a crash site for flight MH370, his government said Monday as a ship equipped to pinpoint its “black box” prepared to steam to the search area.

Ships and planes from seven nations scanned a vast zone far off western Australia for yet another day, but the hunt for debris that would prove the Malaysia Airlines jet crashed in the Indian Ocean more than three weeks ago turned up nothing.

“The prime minister, who is going to Perth on Wednesday, will be briefed fully on how things have been conducted and probably will be discussing what are the chances ahead,” Malaysian Transport and Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

Experts warn debris must be found within days to nail down a crash site in order for any use of the US-supplied black box detector — known as a towed pinger locator (TPL) — to be feasible.

The US Navy, which has supplied the detection device, said in a statement Monday: “Without confirmation of debris it will be virtually impossible to effectively employ the TPL since the range on the black-box pinger is only about 1.6km.”

But Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said earlier in the day no time limit would be imposed on the search for clues as to what happened.

 ‘We owe it to the world’ 

“We owe it to the families, we owe it to everyone that travels by air, we owe it to the anxious governments of the countries who had people on that aircraft. We owe it to the wider world which has been transfixed by this mystery for three weeks now,” Abbott said in Perth.

The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people vanished without a trace on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, leaving stunned relatives, the aviation industry, and ordinary travellers around the world hanging on the mystery.

Families of Chinese passengers have angrily attacked Malaysia, alleging incompetence and deceit in what even Malaysian officials call the “unprecedented” loss of a jumbo jet.

More than a dozen Chinese relatives — part of a group of nearly 30 who arrived on the weekend to press for answers — kept up the pressure after a prayer session Monday at a Kuala Lumpur Buddhist temple.

“We will never forgive those who hurt our families, and don’t tell the truth and delay the rescue mission,” a spokesman for the group, Jiang Hui, told reporters, reiterating suspicions toward Malaysia voiced by many relatives of the 153 Chinese aboard.

The Australian vessel Ocean Shield, fitted with the pinger locator and an underwater drone designed to home in on the black box’s signal, was to conduct sea trials off Perth on Monday before heading to the search area.

A black box signal usually lasts only about 30 days. Fears are mounting that time will run out — Ocean Shield will not reach the search zone, now the size of Norway, until Thursday, Hishammuddin said, roughly 26 days after the plane went missing.

If floating MH370 debris is found, authorities plan to analyse recent weather patterns and ocean currents to determine where the plane went down.

Malaysia believes MH370 was deliberately diverted by someone on board and that satellite data indicates it crashed in the remote Indian Ocean.

Monday’s search saw ten planes take to the skies, with ten ships already at sea. Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, South Korea and the US are taking part.

Malaysia remains officially in charge, but Australia has assumed increasing responsibility, appointing retired air chief marshal Angus Houston to head a new coordination centre in Perth.

Many Chinese relatives, still holding out slim hopes, have taken issue with Najib’s March 24 announcement that the plane was lost at sea, despite the lack of firm evidence.

Malaysian response ‘clumsy’ 

Hishammuddin said “high-level” Malaysian officials and experts involved in an investigation into MH370 would brief families simultaneously in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing “soon” in a bid to explain Malaysia’s stance.

Malaysia insists it is being transparent, but is yet to release any details of its investigation into what happened, which has included probing the backgrounds of everyone on the flight, including its crew.

In testy exchanges with foreign journalists Monday, Hishammuddin said: “We are not hiding anything, we are just following the procedure that has been set.”

Malaysia also has come under fire from China’s state media, while Beijing has pressed for more transparency in the investigation. Authorities there allowed angry relatives to stage a rare protest last week at Malaysia’s embassy.

But a commentary in the government-controlled China Daily struck a more measured tone Monday, urging relatives to accept their losses.

“Although the Malaysian government’s handling of the crisis has been quite clumsy, we need to understand this is perhaps the most bizarre incident in Asian civil aviation history,” it said.

ANKARA — Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party took a strong early lead in local elections Sunday, TV channels reported, despite turbulent months marked by mass protests, corruption scandals and Internet blocks.

If the initial trend holds up, it would considerably brighten the outlook for Erdogan, who had gone on a weeks-long campaign marathon ahead of the vote widely seen as a referendum on his 11-year rule.

With over 18 per cent of the municipal votes nationwide counted by early evening, his Justice and Development Party (AKP) was at almost 50 per cent of the vote, the private NTV television reported.

CNN-Turk said the AKP looked to have scored around 48 per cent of the votes cast nationwide, based on more than 10 per cent of the ballots counted, and was ahead in megacity Istanbul and the capital Ankara.

Erdogan has been eyeing a run for the presidency in August — the first time voters will directly elect the head of state — or may ask his party to change rules and allow him to seek a fourth term as premier.

Despite much criticism at home and abroad over what critics have labelled his increasingly authoritarian rule, Erdogan and his party, have drawn large crowds cheering the man sometimes dubbed “the sultan”.

Earlier Sunday, casting his own vote in Istanbul, Erdogan had voiced confidence in a victory, saying that “our people will tell the truth today... what the people say is what it is”.

Anticipating a poll triumph, a boisterous crowd of his flag-waving followers were watching TV coverage on a large screen outside AKP headquarters in Ankara, waiting for Erdogan to give a “balcony speech”.

Months of turmoil 

Months of political turmoil — fought out in fierce street clashes and explosive Internet leaks — have left Turkey polarised between Erdogan’s Muslim conservative supporters and a secular political camp.

The premier’s heavy-handed response to being challenged on the streets and online has included a deadly police crackdown on protesters in Istanbul and blocks on Twitter and YouTube.

The clampdown has alienated NATO allies and detracted from Erdogan’s much lauded record of driving an economic boom and transforming the country spanning Europe and Asia into an emerging global player.

“Our democracy must be strengthened and cleansed,” said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party as he cast his vote Sunday, vowing to build “a pleasant society”.

Two activists of the group Femen, which has backed the Gezi movement and protested the Twitter ban, were arrested after staging a bare-breasted protest with the words “Ban Erdogan” across their chests.

Erdogan’s government has been hit by damaging online leaks that started in December, with wide-ranging bribery and sleaze claims against Erdogan’s inner circle going viral in the youthful country.

Erdogan has accused Fethullah Gulen, an influential US-based Muslim cleric, and his loyalists in the Turkish police and justice system, of being behind the leaks and plotting his downfall.

The spiralling crisis has sent down the Turkish lira and stock market and rattled investors’ faith in the Muslim democracy that has often been described as a model for post-Arab Spring countries.

If Erdogan’s party manages to sustain its early lead as the ballot count continues, it would suggest such troubles have been largely shrugged off by many of Turkey’s over 50 million eligible voters.

KABUL — Crowds queued up outside voter registration centres in Afghanistan on Sunday and presidential candidates held large campaign rallies, six days ahead of elections that have been shaken by Taliban attacks.

The vote, which will choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai, comes as US-led foreign troops withdraw after 13 years of fighting the fierce Islamist insurgency raging across the south and east of the country.

One Romanian soldier was killed on Sunday by an improvised explosive device (IED) in the southern province of Zabul, taking the US-led coalition death toll to 3,429 since operations began in 2001.

On Saturday, the Kabul headquarters of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) was attacked when five Taliban militants occupied a nearby building and unleashed rockets and gunfire towards the fortified compound.

All five attackers were killed by Afghan security forces six hours after the attack began, and there were no other casualties.

“Our vote is our responsibility, people want change and we will bring that change through voting,” said Abdul Waris Sadat, a 21-year-old student waiting with several hundred people for hours outside a voter registration centre in Kabul.

“The attacks by the Taliban have motivated people to come to this centre, register and vote,” he said. “This is only answer that they give to the Taliban.”

Rassoul Khurami, a 60-year old shopkeeper, added: “I know my vote counts, and this time even if I get killed I will go and vote, I’m not scared of Taliban threats.”

According to the latest IEC figures, nearly 3.7 million new voters have registered for Saturday’s presidential and provincial council elections.

Afghan officials, the United Nations and foreign donor nations have struck a defiant note ahead of the vote after recent attacks on IEC centres, Kabul’s most prestigious hotel and a guesthouse run by a US-based anti-landmine charity.

“Thousands of people are queuing every day behind IEC offices to get voter cards, showing strength and determination that nothing will stop us,” said interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi.

Candidates hit campaign trail 

Former World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani and Karzai loyalist Zalmai Rassoul held rallies in the northwestern province of Herat on Sunday, while Abdullah Abdullah, who came second in the 2009 vote, campaigned in the southern province of Kandahar.

“We will be victorious in this election — not through fraud, but based on the votes of the people,” Abdullah told thousands of flag-waving supporters.

“These attacks cannot stop the people of Afghanistan, who want to have the election.”

Rassoul is widely seen as Karzai’s favoured candidate, and Ghani has drawn big crowds to his rallies, but the two could split the Pashtun ethnic vote while Abdullah retains strong support from non-Pashtun communities.

Eight candidates are running in the April 5 presidential election, with a second round run-off between the two leading contenders expected in late May.

The IEC announced on Sunday that 748 polling stations would stay closed as they were in dangerous insurgent strongholds, leaving a total of 6,757 stations to open on Saturday.

“The sites that will remain closed are in places where the observers cannot go, or there are landmines,” said Ziaulhaq Amarkhil, head of the IEC secretariat.

“We want to the people to go to polling... we want the candidates to respect the people’s votes and we want the candidates to avoid fraud.”

A repeat of the violence and corruption seen in previous elections would undermine international donors’ claims that the expensive 13-year US-led intervention has made progress in establishing a functioning Afghan state.

A small European Union monitoring team will assess the election, and will issue a preliminary report two days after voting.

The Romanian government confirmed that one of its soldiers was killed and five injured on Sunday on a patrol with Afghan forces along the main highway from Kabul and Kandahar.

On March 20, four Taliban gunmen smuggled pistols into Kabul’s high-security Serena Hotel and shot dead nine people including four foreigners.

The victims included Agence France-Presse journalist Sardar Ahmad, his wife and two of their three children.

HMAS STIRLING NAVAL BASE, Australia/KUALA LUMPUR — The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 could take years, US Navy officials suggested on Sunday, as search and rescue officials raced to locate the plane’s black box recorder days before its batteries are set to die.

Ten ships and as many aircraft are searching a massive area in the Indian Ocean west of Perth, trying to find some trace of the aircraft, which went missing more than three weeks ago and is presumed to have crashed.

The chief of the China Maritime Search and Rescue Centre, He Jianzhong, told the Xinhua state news agency no objects linked to the plane had been found on Sunday and that Chinese vessels would expand their search area.

Numerous objects have been spotted in the two days since Australian authorities moved the search 1,100km after new analysis of radar and satellite data concluded the Boeing 777 travelled faster and for a shorter distance after vanishing from civilian radar screens on March 8. None has been confirmed as coming from Flight MH370.

US Navy Captain Mark Matthews, who is in charge of the US Towed Pinger Locator, told journalists at Stirling Naval Base near Perth that the lack of information about where the plane went down seriously hampers the ability to find it.

“Right now the search area is basically the size of the Indian Ocean, which would take an untenable amount of time to search,” he said.

“If you compare this to Air France Flight 447, we had much better positional information of where that aircraft went into the water,” he said, referring to a plane that crashed in 2009 near Brazil and which took more than two years to find.

The US Navy cannot use the pinger locator and other sonar used to listen for the beacons on the aircraft’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders until “conclusive visual evidence” of debris is found, US Navy spokesman Commander William Marks told CBS’ “Face the Nation” programme.

If no location is found, searchers would have to use sonar to slowly and methodically map the bottom of the ocean, he said. “That is an incredibly long process to go through. It is possible, but it could take quite a while,” he said.

Among the vessels to join the search is an Australian defence force ship, the Ocean Shield, that has been fitted with a sophisticated US black box locator and an underwater drone.

Australia, which is coordinating the search in the southern Indian Ocean, said it had established a new body to oversee the investigation and issued countries involved in the search a set of protocols to abide by should any wreckage be found.

Malaysia says the plane, which disappeared less than an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, was likely diverted deliberately. Investigators have determined no apparent motive or other red flags among the 227 passengers or the 12 crew.

Weather threatens expanded search

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said aircraft from China, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the United States were involved in the search on Sunday.

The search has involved unprecedented cooperation between more than two dozen countries, and 60 aircraft and ships but has also been hampered by regional rivalries, and an apparent reluctance to share potentially crucial information due to security concerns.

Asked if more resources could be added to the international effort, US Navy spokesman Marks told CBS, “We have about as many assets out there as we can. You have to wonder if the debris is even out there. If we fly over something, we will see it.”

This week, Australia issued a set of rules and guidelines to all parties involved in the search, giving Malaysia authority over the investigation of any debris to be conducted on Australian soil, a spokeswoman at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told Reuters.

“Australia intends to bring the wreckage ashore at Perth and hold it securely for the purposes of the Malaysian investigation,” the spokeswoman said.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Sunday appointed a former chief of Australia’s defence forces, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, to lead a new Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC).

The JACC will coordinate communication between all international partners as well as with the families of passengers, many of whom are expected to travel to Perth.

The Malaysian government has come under strong criticism from China, home to more than 150 of the passengers, where relatives of the missing have accused the government of “delays and deception”.

On Sunday, dozens of angry relatives of Chinese passengers from Beijing met with Chinese embassy officials in Kuala Lumpur, piling more pressure on the Malaysian government over its handling of the case.

“We arrived here this morning with sorrow and anxiety, because the special envoy from Malaysia, the so called high-level tech team, did not give us any effective information in meetings that took place in three consecutive days,” said Jiang Hui, a relative of one of the victims.

“We want the Malaysian government to apologise for giving out confusing information in the past week which caused the delay in the search and rescue effort.”