World

DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukraine’s Western-backed leaders on Tuesday invited pro-Kremlin insurgents to a videoconference aimed at halting spiralling violence and what Kiev warned was an imminent invasion by thousands of Russian troops.

Kiev sharply raised the stakes in Europe’s most explosive crisis in decades by declaring on Monday that an Ukrainian transport plane downed in the eastern conflict zone had been hit by a rocket fired from the Russian side of the frontier between the two ex-Soviet states.

Russia has broken with its traditional denials of all links to the uprising by not publicly responding to the charge.

A top Ukrainian general went a step further by telling a live television audience in Kiev that he feared a Russian invasion was imminent.

“Ukraine, like never before, stands on the cusp of a wide-scale aggression from our current northern border,” said National Security and Defence Council Deputy Secretary Mykhaylo Koval.

The former defence minister said the Kremlin had parked 22,000 troops in the annexed Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and had other units stretching from the north-central region of Chernigiv to the southeastern edge of the Russian-Ukranian border on the Sea of Azov.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s office said Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin also presented “photo and video evidence” of Russia covertly supplying the fighters with weapons and armoured vehicles.

President Vladimir Putin rejects accusations of orchestrating the uprising in reprisal for the February ouster of a Russian-backed leader and Kiev’s subsequent signature of a historic EU deal instead of a new Kremlin pact.

Fears of Russia’s direct intervention and the soaring civilian toll — 23 more people were reported killed overnight — has intensified pressure on Western allies to quickly address their worst standoff with Russia since the Cold War.

Skype talks 

Germany and France have been spearheading EU efforts to revive an Ukrainian truce that could save the bloc from having to introduce sweeping economic sanctions against energy-rich Russia to which Putin has already vowed to respond.

The United States has pressed EU leaders to impose arms sale restrictions and limited financial sanctions on Russia when they meet at a summit in Brussels on Wednesday.

Indirect negotiations between Kiev — represented by former president Leonid Kuchma — and the separatists aimed at extending a shaky 10-day ceasefire fizzled out after two rounds last month.

But Poroshenko’s office said he had agreed with Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel to arrange “Skype videoconference talks” that Kiev had first suggested last week.

Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Vasyl Zvarych expressed confidence that the consultations would be held on Tuesday.

Soaring civilian toll

The border became the conflict’s new frontline after rebels last week evacuated a host of towns and cities that they had held since early April in the coal mining region of Donetsk.

The militias have since concentrated their forces around the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk — both capitals of their own “People’s Republics” — and are hoping for new weapons deliveries to revive their campaign.

Witnesses in Donetsk told AFP they had seen the insurgents dispatch four tanks and eight armoured transport vehicles towards Lugansk to help repel an intensifying air and artillery push by Kiev forces on the city of 420,000 people.

Defence officials said four of the downed plane’s eight crew had been rescued in rebel territory.

“Two servicemen were captured by the rebels and efforts to rescue them are under way. The fate of the other two crew is unknow,” the Ukrainian military said in a statement.

Ukraine also temporarily grounded all its jets in the two separatist regions as a safety precaution.

Lugansk on Tuesday declared three days mourning for 17 civilians killed since the weekend in artillery strikes that both sides have blamed on each other.

But local authorities reported the death of nearly two dozen more civilians across the rustbelt — including 11 people killed when their building apartment block crumbled after being hit by a missile in the Russian border town of Snizhne.

A defence spokesman said six Ukrainian soldiers had also been killed overnight as the toll in the low-scale war approached 600 civilians and fighters on both sides.

The National Security and Defence Council reported the death of 258 servicemen and capture of another 45 since Kiev launched its “anti-terrorist operation” on April 13.

MOSCOW — Twenty-one people died and scores more were wounded after a train derailed in Moscow’s packed metro during rush hour on Tuesday in the worst accident ever to hit one of the world’s busiest subways.

Russian television described scenes of chaos and panic on the capital’s famed system, saying passengers fell like dominoes when the train travelling at 70 kilometres an hour braked abruptly, and three carriages derailed and crumpled.

Rescue teams were still combing through the mangled metal carriages hours later in an attempt to extricate several bodies.

“I thought it was the end,” one surviving passenger said on television. “We were trapped and only got out through a miracle.”

President Vladimir Putin, who is on a trip to Brazil, ordered a criminal probe into the tragedy that put a huge strain on the city of some 12 million and snarled traffic on its notoriously clogged roads amid a heatwave.

Sirens wailed as dozens of ambulances rushed to help treat the wounded and helicopters buzzed overhead to evacuate those with serious injuries, AFP journalists said at the scene outside the Park Pobedy metro station in western Moscow.

Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova told Russian agencies that 21 people had died.

More than 160 people were hospitalised, including 42 still in intensive care, the head of Moscow’s health department Georgy Golukhov told journalists.

At least two foreign nationals — a Tajik and a Chinese — were among the dead, Golukhov said.

“This is a huge catastrophe for us,” deputy prime minister Olga Golodets said in televised remarks.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, led a prayer to honour the victims, while city hall called for a day of mourning on Wednesday.

The accident raised calls for urgent improvements to the ornate but overcrowded metro, which first opened in 1935 under Stalin.

The Investigative Committee said it was looking at a number of possible causes including a mechanical flaw in a carriage and a power failure.

A terror attack has been ruled out, the committee said.

Moscow deputy mayor Pyotr Biryukov said earlier that several people had been trapped in the train, while the authorities said more than 1,000 had to be evacuated.

Passengers said smoke quickly spread through the carriages and rescue workers treated them with oxygen.

“After the most thorough investigation there will be not only dismissals but also criminal cases against those who are responsible for this tragedy,” Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

“What happened is one of the most major accidents of recent times.”

News of the crash quickly spread on social networks.

Alexei Naryshkin, a presenter on Echo of Moscow radio, posted a photograph on Twitter of rescue workers carrying a body in a black bag.

“They are laying out the injured. They constantly go down with stretchers. They carry them out. Some are unconscious. Some are moaning with pain,” Naryshkin wrote.

Another witness, a young man in a polo shirt, said in televised comments: “I got into the carriage and after about 20 seconds, the light went out and the train was just pulled apart. I was just thrown into the centre of the carriage.”

“Panic erupted,” he said.

“We climbed out of the carriages and we saw a blockage, men took hammers and pliers and broke it down and we walked on. The train was smashed, the chassis was just pulled apart.”

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — A car packed with explosives exploded on Tuesday as it sped through a crowded market in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Paktika, killing at least 89 people, officials said, one of the most violent attacks in the country in a year.

The huge explosion took place not far from the porous border with Pakistan’s North Waziristan region, where the military has been attacking hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban in the past few weeks, prompting militants to retreat toward Afghanistan.

“The number of victims may increase,” said General Zahir Azimi, a defence ministry spokesman.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack as a “despicable criminal act”, which was a serious violation of international law, his spokesman said.

The attack comes at an uneasy time in Afghanistan as the country recounts votes from a disputed presidential election which the Taliban have vowed to disrupt.

But the Taliban distanced themselves from Tuesday’s attack. The movement’s leaders have ordered militants not to target civilians.

“The truth behind this attack will become clear after an investigation, but we clearly announce that it was not done by the Mujahedeen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said in a statement.

“The Mujahedeen do not conduct such attacks and such attacks do not bring any benefit to them.”

A local deputy police chief, Nissar Ahmad Abdulrahimzai, told Reuters that police had been tipped about the car and were chasing it when it exploded.

“The explosion was so big it destroyed many shops. Dozens of people are trapped under the roofs,” Mohammad Raza Kharoti, the district governor, told Reuters.

“The number of wounded will rise to more than 100 and the number of those martyred will also increase.”

In Kabul, a remote-control bomb concealed by a roadside killed two employees of President Hamid Karzai’s media office and wounded five, police said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

The attacks took place as foreign troops are gradually withdrawing from the country. The United Nations said last week that civilian casualties jumped by almost a quarter in the first half of this year as hostilities escalated.

ABUJA — Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan promised on Monday that more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamist militants would soon return home, teenage Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai said after meeting him.

Malala, who became a global celebrity after surviving being shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for girls’ education, was visiting Nigeria to support an international campaign for the release of the teenage students abducted in mid-April by the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram.

“The president promised me... that the abducted girls will return to their homes soon,” Malala, who has called the 219 missing students her “sisters”, told a news conference after a 45-minute meeting with Jonathan at the presidential villa.

The Pakistani teenager, who turned 17 on Saturday, at the weekend met parents of the schoolgirls snatched from the northeastern village of Chibok by Boko Haram militants fighting to establish an Islamic state in religiously mixed Nigeria.

The Nigerian girls’ plight triggered an international #BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign supported by Michelle Obama and Angelina Jolie.

This has drawn attention to the war in Nigeria’s northeast, where Boko Haram, which is inspired by the Taliban and whose name means “Western education is sinful”, has killed thousands and abducted hundreds since launching an uprising in 2009.

With the girls still missing three months after their April 14 kidnap, Jonathan faces criticism at home and abroad over the deteriorating security situation in Africa’s leading oil producer and biggest economy.

Nigeria is receiving intelligence and surveillance assistance from the United States, Britain, France, Israel and other allies but has so far shown little progress in getting the Chibok girls back or in halting almost daily militant raids.

Suspected Boko Haram fighters on Monday attacked a village on market day in northeast Nigeria not far from the Cameroon border, killing at least five local people, and burning homes and shops, a resident and a security source said.

The resident from Ville, near Lassa in the south of Borno state, Suleiman Haruna, told Reuters 20 Boko Haram fighters were killed when local vigilantes fought back but this could not be independently confirmed. The Islamist group has often attacked local rural markets, opening fire on traders and shoppers.

‘Pursuing all feasible options’

Malala told reporters she would hold the Nigerian leader to his pledge that the girls would be home soon.

“I will from now be counting days and will be looking. I can’t stop this campaign until I see these girls return back to their families and continue their education,” she said.

She added that Jonathan had also promised that once the missing girls were rescued, they would be given scholarships to go to school in any part of Nigeria.

Pressed by journalists, Malala said Jonathan described the girls’ situation as “complicated” and that their lives could be put at risk by a military rescue attempt.

“But the president said these girls are his daughters and he is pained by their sufferings and that he has his own daughters and he can feel what they are feeling,” she said.

The Nigerian presidency said Jonathan assured Malala that his government “was very actively pursuing all feasible options to achieve the safe return of the abducted girls”.

“The great challenge in rescuing the Chibok girls is the need to ensure that they are rescued alive,” Jonathan said, according to the presidency statement.

Pakistani Taliban militants shot Malala for her passionate advocacy of women’s right to education. She survived after being airlifted to Britain for treatment, and has since become a symbol of defiance against the militants operating in the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

KIEV — Ukraine on Monday accused Russian army officers of fighting alongside separatists in the east of the country and said Moscow was once more building up its troops on the joint border.

A missile that downed a Ukrainian transport plane carrying eight people near the border was probably fired from Russia, Ukrainian officials said.

President Petro Poroshenko held an emergency meeting of his security chiefs after a weekend of Ukrainian air strikes on rebel positions near the border with Russia and charges by Moscow that Kiev killed a Russian man with a cross-border shell.

The war of words between Kiev and Moscow, and intense fighting, in which Ukrainian forces say they inflicted heavy losses on the rebels, marked a sharp escalation in the three and a half month conflict in which several hundred Ukrainian servicemen, civilians and rebels have been killed.

“Information has... been confirmed that Russian staff officers are taking part in military operations against Ukrainian forces,” Poroshenko said.

Poroshenko made similar complaints of Russian incursions on Sunday to the European Union with an eye to pushing the bloc to exert greater pressure and possibly more sanctions, on Moscow.

Poroshenko told his security chiefs that government forces, which lost 23 men in a rocket attack on an army camp last Friday, were now facing a new Russian missile system and there would have to be a change in tactics. He gave no details.

Accusing Russia of embarking on a course of escalation in Ukraine’s eastern regions, National and Security Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko told journalists: “In the past 24 hours, deployment of [Russian] units and military equipment across the border from the Sumy and Luhansk border points was noticed. The Russian Federation continues to build up troops on the border.”

NATO said Russia had increased its forces along the border and now had 10,000-12,000 troops in the area.

Lysenko added three Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 12 more injured in the fighting in the past 24 hours.

Moscow’s response to the cross-border shelling and the Ukrainian reports of Russian troops being moved up to the border raised again the prospect of Russian intervention, after weeks in which President Vladimir Putin had appeared intent on disengaging, pulling back tens of thousands of troops he had massed at the frontier.

Military success

The Ukrainian army said it had broken a rebel encirclement of Luhansk Airport on Sunday night. A spokesman for the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic said 30 volunteer fighters had been killed in Ukrainian fire on Oleksandrivka, a village to the east of the town, Russia’s Interfax news agency said.

As military action continued on Monday near the rebel-controlled border town of Luhansk, Ukraine’s defence minister said a Ukrainian AN-26 transport plane, taking part in the military campaign against the rebels, had been shot down by a rocket which was “probably” fired from Russian territory.

Officials said two crew members, out of the eight people on board, had been in contact with the army general staff, and a search and rescue operation was under way. The fate of the other six people was not immediately known.

Defence Minister Valery Heletey said the plane had been flying at a height of 6,500 metres and was out of range of any weapon the separatists had.

“So the plane was downed from another, more powerful rocket weapon which was fired, probably, from the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said, according to Poroshenko’s website.

The rocket may have been a Pantsir ground-to-air or self-guided air-to-air rocket fired from a Russian plane, he said.

Lysenko said separatists, backed by what he described as Russian “mercenaries”, had fired on Ukrainian border guards in an attempt to give cover as armoured vehicles and equipment were being brought into the country.

And he again rejected Russian charges that Ukraine forces had fired a shell over the border killing a Russian man on Sunday — an incident that Moscow has described as an “aggressive act” which would have “irreversible consequences”.

“The [rebel] fighters systematically fire mortars and shoot into Russian territory, which killed a Russian citizen,” Lysenko told journalists.

Russia said it had invited monitors from the OSCE, a European security and rights body, to visit two of its border crossings with Ukraine as a sign of goodwill.

In a weekend of fierce combat, Ukraine said its warplanes had inflicted heavy losses on the pro-Russian separatists in air strikes on their positions, including an armoured convoy which Kiev said had crossed the border from Russia.

Poroshenko’s office said Kiev would present documentary proof of incursions from Russia to the international community via diplomats.

But Russia kept up pressure on Kiev over the cross-border shell incident. A Russian newspaper, citing a source close to the Kremlin, said on Monday that Moscow was considering the possibility of pinpoint strikes on Ukraine in retaliation.

EU sanctions

Poroshenko on Sunday complained of alleged Russian incursions into Ukraine in a telephone call with the European Union’s Herman Van Rompuy.

The EU — Ukraine’s strategic partner with which it signed a landmark political and trade agreement last month — targeted a group of separatist leaders with travel bans and asset freezes on Saturday but avoided fresh sanctions on Russian business.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted in April when armed pro-Russian fighters seized towns and government buildings, weeks after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in response to the overthrow of a pro-Moscow president in Kiev.

Well over 200 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed in the fighting and several hundred civilians and rebels.

The fighting has escalated sharply in recent days after Ukrainian forces pushed the rebels out of their most heavily fortified bastion, the town of Slaviansk.

Hundreds of rebels, led by a self-proclaimed defence minister from Moscow, have retreated to the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, built reinforcements and pledged to make a stand. The once-bustling city has been emptying in fear of a battle.

Rebel fighters on Monday were evacuating about 200 Donetsk residents by bus across the Russian border into the Rostov area.

Vladimir, a 55-year-old coal miner, was sending his wife with two children to relatives across the border. “The Ukrainians have already cut off water. Electricity is only just working. How can you live without water and light?” he said.

DONETSK, Ukraine/MOSCOW — Russia threatened Ukraine on Sunday with “irreversible consequences” after a man was killed by a shell fired across the border from Ukraine, an incident Moscow described in warlike terms as aggression that must be met with a response.

Although both sides have reported cross-border shootings in the past, it appears to be the first time Moscow has reported fatalities on its side of the border in the three-month conflict which has killed hundreds of people in Ukraine.

Kiev called the accusation its forces had fired across the border “total nonsense” and suggested the attack could have been the work of rebels trying to provoke Moscow to intervene on their behalf. The rebels denied they were responsible.

Inside Ukraine, combat has intensified dramatically since a rebel missile attack that killed dozens of government troops on Friday. Local officials said on Sunday 18 people were killed in shooting incidents in the two main rebel-held cities.

Russia’s Interfax news agency said fierce fighting had broken out on the outskirts of rebel-controlled Luhansk, a city near the border with Russia, and the Ukrainian army had attacked with a force of 70 tanks.

Kiev said it had bombarded a convoy of 100 armoured vehicles and trucks that had crossed into Ukraine carrying in rebel fighters from Russia. It also said seven of its troops had been killed in attacks.

Moscow’s bellicose response to the cross-border shelling raises the renewed prospect of overt Russian intervention, after weeks in which President Vladimir Putin had appeared intent on disengaging, pulling back tens of thousands of troops he had massed at the frontier.

Russia sent Ukraine a note of protest describing the incident as “an aggressive act by the Ukrainian side against sovereign Russian territory and the citizens of the Russian Federation”, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement warning of “irreversible consequences”.

“This represents a qualitative escalation of the danger to our citizens, now even on our own territory. Of course this naturally cannot pass without a response,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told Rossiya-24 state TV.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said a shell had landed in the yard of a house in a small town on the Russian side of the frontier, killing a man and wounding a woman. The Russian town is called Donetsk, sharing the name of the Ukrainian city of 1 million people that the rebels have declared capital of an independent “people’s republic”.

‘Total nonsense’

Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said reports that Ukrainian forces were responsible were “total nonsense and the information is untrue”.

“The forces of the anti-terrorist operation do not fire on the territory of a neighbouring country and they do not fire on residential areas,” he said. “We have many examples of terrorists carrying out provocation shooting, including into Russian territory and then accusing Ukrainian forces of it.”

The rebels denied blame. Interfax news agency quoted the rebels’ self-proclaimed first deputy prime minister, Andrey Prugin, as saying he was “90 per cent certain” it was Ukrainian troops that had fired across the border, because the rebels were short on ammunition and cautious about where they fired.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted in April when armed pro-Russian fighters seized towns and government buildings, weeks after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in response to the overthrow of a pro-Moscow president in Kiev.

The fighting has escalated sharply in recent days after Ukrainian forces pushed the rebels out of their most heavily-fortified bastion, the town of Slaviansk.

Hundreds of rebels, led by a self-proclaimed defence minister from Moscow, have retreated to the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, built reinforcements and pledged to make a stand. The once-bustling city has been emptying in fear of a battle.

“Everybody here is sitting on a suitcase. People are only prevented from leaving by work — that is if they have any work. If they [the Ukrainian forces] are going to bomb then I shall, of course, go too,” said Olga, 35.

On the streets there are fewer and fewer cars. Some drivers no longer bother to stop at red lights since there are no police around and few vehicles.

Rebel fighters vowed to fight to the end if the army comes.

“We are ready for them. We will not leave. Let women and children leave. But I don’t care much for grown men going. They are cowards, rascals, scum,” said a man named Lis, who described himself as an officer in the Vostok battalion, a rebel force.

Kiev says Moscow has provoked the rebellion, and allowed fighters and heavy weapons to cross the border with impunity. It has struggled to reassert control over the eastern frontier, recapturing border positions from rebels.

The past two days have seen an escalation in retaliation after dozens of Ukrainian troops were killed in a rocket attack on a base near the border on Friday. Kiev said it killed hundreds of rebels in air strikes on Saturday, although there was no independent confirmation of such high casualties and the rebels denied suffering serious losses.

Ukrainian security spokesman Lysenko said on Sunday forces had used artillery to strike a convoy of about 100 armoured vehicles and trucks after confirming that the convoy was carrying “a large number of recruits” into Ukraine from Russia.

He said seven Ukrainian service members had died in attacks in the east in the past day.

The Donetsk city council said in a statement on its web site on Sunday that 12 people had been killed at a mining settlement near the Ukrainian city. It gave no details of who had fired. Municipal authorities in Luhansk, capital of the other rebellious eastern province, said six people were killed in clashes there. It also gave no details of who was to blame.

Western countries have threatened to impose harsh economic sanctions on Moscow if it intervenes openly. Russia denies fuelling the conflict, but Kiev and Western countries say it has supported the rebels.

In Kiev, President Petro Poroshenko’s office said he had turned down an invitation to attend the World Cup football final in Brazil because of the situation in Ukraine.

KABUL — He was only on the ground for 48 hours, but America’s top diplomat John Kerry may well have helped prevent Afghanistan from sliding into another bloody ethnic war.

The helicopters were waiting for the US secretary of state when he arrived in Kabul from Beijing early Friday on a last-minute mission to broker an end to a tense political impasse.

Some 48 hours later they flew him back over the darkened city streets from the fortress-like US embassy compound to his plane — a deal triumphantly in his hand.

Few had believed it possible that Kerry could bring together two presidential rivals bitterly at odds over disputed elections, and help avert fears of ethnic violence in a country ravaged by decades of war.

But the indefatigable 70-year-old dropped a political bombshell when he announced that rivals Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani had agreed that every one of the eight million votes cast in their June run-off poll would be audited.

Just days earlier the two men were barely speaking, as Abdullah vehemently accused Ghani of stealing victory by stuffing the ballots.

But standing next to each other with Kerry late on Saturday before the world’s cameras, they clasped hands, smiling, and raised them in the air.

With that single dramatic show of unity, Kerry may well have helped guide Afghanistan’s young democracy away from a return to the bloody ethnic civil war of the 1990s.

The announcement followed two days of marathon meetings, with Kerry and his staff shuttling between the two candidates and their teams in the embassy.

He also met for hours one-on-one with each candidate.

With Kerry due in Austria for talks on a Iran nuclear agreement, Saturday’s window for a deal was closing rapidly.

“It wasn’t until the 11th hour... that we had a full agreement,” a senior US official who took part in the negotiations told journalists.

The talks had focused on the best mechanism for auditing the poll results.

A second track sought to persuade the feuding rivals to meet to discuss their differences and clear the way towards a national unity government.

Afghan analyst Younus Fakour said the agreement had “prevented a disaster in Afghanistan, it prevented the creation of a parallel government, it prevented chaos” — and the national unity government element was crucial.

“Before, the candidates were afraid that if one wins, the other will be left out. But with this they are sure they will be part of the next government,” he told AFP.

By midday Saturday it became clear that given doubts over a UN proposal to audit votes from around 35 per cent of polling stations, it made more sense to work towards an unprecedented review of all ballots cast.

“While it’s more resource-intensive, while it’s time-intensive, a full audit stands to more significantly improve the credibility of the outcome just because it’s more extensive,” a second US official said.

As reporters awaiting a press conference at UN mission headquarters broke the Ramadan fast with a hastily arranged “iftar” of take-away lamb, rice, bread and dates, Kerry persuaded the two men to meet face-to-face.

Ghani, a former World Bank economist, was asked to join talks with Abdullah as they also hammered out a structure for a national unity government.

“When Dr Ghani walked in, the two approached each other and immediately embraced and there was clearly a degree of affection between the two,” the first US official said.

“For those of us who had sat through these meetings over 48 hours it was a welcome sign, a signal that actually here is something that may stick because it’s going to require the personalities involved to be committed to it.”

The dispute had raised fears of an ethnic split, as Abdullah draws support from Tajiks and other northern groups while Ghani is backed by Pashtun tribes of the south and east.

Both US officials praised the role of the United Nations which has been working intensively for weeks to break the deadlock, and which flew in its chief electoral official for the negotiations.

The US will now support calls from the head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, for additional resources and manpower to help audit all ballots in coming weeks.

“You deliver miracles,” Kubis told Kerry, as they got the final seal of approval from outgoing President Hamid Karzai.

“Because what we witnessed today was not just a topmost diplomatic achievement, it was close to a miracle.”

Kate Clark of the Afghan Analysts’ Network hailed the US role and said the deal’s “strong international underpinning” gave cause for optimism.

While it still remains unclear how the agreement will play out, one Afghan official e-mailed a member of Kerry’s team voicing heartfelt thanks and adding that “most Afghans will sleep more peacefully tonight”.

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel lamented on Saturday the breakdown in trust between Germany and the United States amid a spying row that saw the CIA chief in Berlin expelled from the country.

“The thing we always have to keep in mind when we are working together is if the person across the table is possibly working at the same time for someone else, that for me isn’t a trusting relationship,” she told German ZDF television in a pre-recorded interview.

“Here we obviously have different points of view and we need to talk to one another,” Merkel said, adding that she had “naturally hoped for a change” in Washington’s behaviour.

The US on Friday hinted at displeasure with Germany over its handling of the spying row after the CIA station chief in Berlin was thrown out of the country.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest, who previously declined to go into detail about the row because it touched on intelligence matters, offered a window into US thinking.

“Allies with sophisticated intelligence agencies like the United States and Germany understand with some degree of detail exactly what those intelligence relationships and activities entail,” Earnest said.

“Any differences that we have are most effectively resolved through established private channels, not through the media.”

Some US officials have privately expressed frustration with Germany’s angry reaction to the reported discovery that two government officials were working for the CIA and its decision to respond in a highly public manner by expelling the spy agency’s Berlin chief — an unusual display of fury by Germany towards its ally.

The scandal, which follows German complaints that the National Security Agency tapped Merkel’s mobile phone, has seen the chancellor come under political pressure to respond.

“We no longer live in the Cold War era where everyone is suspicious of everyone. I think the secret services in the 21st century should concentrate on important issues,” Merkel said. “We work very closely with the Americans and I hope that will continue.”

She repeated however that the espionage affair would not jeopardise negotiations between Berlin and Washington over a transatlantic trade deal.

‘Trust and mutual respect’ 

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier reacted to the scandal by saying he wanted a revived partnership with Washington, based on “trust and mutual respect”.

He pledged to begin rebuilding confidence at a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna over the weekend.

Steinmeier has been one of a number of German politicians who have spoken frankly and openly about the espionage drama, in a way which appears to have irritated Washington.

The two nations cooperate broadly on foreign policy and on intelligence matters, including on the vital work of trying to detect and disrupt terror plots.

Germany has in the past sought a “no spying” pact with Washington similar to US agreements with Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, but the US government balked at a deal that could set a precedent for others.

DONETSK, Ukraine — Donetsk, one of the last bastions of pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, has become a ghost town as residents clog the roads and railway stations in a desperate scramble to escape advancing government troops.

The self-proclaimed prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Oleksandr Borodai, claims more than 70,000 of the city’s 900,000 inhabitants have already fled as Kiev’s forces move within 20 kilometres of the city.

Every train was full on Friday as residents calmly joined long queues to buy tickets.

“I have lived here more than 40 years and it is very difficult for me to leave this town. But there is no other solution,” says Natalia, who was catching a train to Dnipropetrovsk, 250 kilometres west, from where she plans to cross the border into Russia.

She is fleeing after months of daily “bombardments” by Ukrainian government planes, which have laid seige to the separatist stronghold.

“The planes fly near my house permanently and fire on the town,” she says.

Watching over a pile of bags, a man in his fifties prepared to join his parents in Russia with his daughters and grandchildren.

“Everything is shutting down,” says the man, who did not give his name. “There is nothing to do here. No work — and it is getting too dangerous.”

Stall-keepers and shoppers at a small market outside the station jump at the sound of artillery fire that breaks out sporadically a few kilometres away at the airport, where the separatists and government forces are vying for control.

“It is very scary,” says Yaroslava, who runs a stall selling sunglasses. “But we do not want to leave. We just want to survive and to no longer be bombarded.”

No time for football

The exodus from Donetsk is also taking place by road.

“I would say that one car in five is filled with refugees,” says a young separatist volunteer manning a roadblock around 20 kilometres east of the city.

“But me, I’m not going anywhere. My mother and my two grandmothers are buried here, so I will fight, even though I have sent my wife to Russia.”

Minibuses and trams are still operating in the city, but cars and pedestrians are sparse. There are hardly any cafes or restaurants open and those that are hurry to close up before nightfall.

Only food stores appear to be functioning normally. Banks and any shops that could be pillaged have shut long ago.

Rumours of imminent clashes and military offences are rife, echoing around social media and increasing hopes and tensions throughout the city.

Ukraine’s military says it controls all routes in and out of Donetsk, and have vowed reprisals after 30 government troops were killed by defiant rebels in the past 48 hours.

On the outskirts of the city, the rebels manning the roadblocks are on high alert. Some passers-by offer them packets of cigarettes or biscuits.

The Vostok (East) Battalion is in charge of one barricade. One of the most professional and organised of the rebel units, they have vowed to “defend the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic” and “reclaim our land”.

That means sacrifices, said one rebel. Still, he predicts “we will have time to watch the football final on Sunday,” referring to the World Cup final between Argentina and Germany.

DONETSK, Ukraine — Panicked refugees flooded highways and packed trains heading out of the main remaining rebel strongholds in eastern Ukraine on Saturday fearing an attack by government forces who lost 30 servicemen to defiant militants.

Separatists killed 19 troops in a hail of heavy rocket fire on Friday near the Russian border in a bloody reminder of their resolve to reverse the recent tide of government gains across the east of the country.

The military said four other troops died elsewhere on Friday and seven more were killed overnight in attacks that also left more than 120 soldiers wounded.

Ukraine’s new Western-backed leader vowed to step up the push east and take revenge on the militias responsible, which could shatter all hopes of a truce.

“The rebels will pay for the life of every one of our servicemen with tens and hundreds of their own,” President Petro Poroshenko told an emergency security meeting.

The militant talk convinced many in the million-strong eastern industrial hub of Donetsk — where gunmen who have been abandoning surrounding cities since last weekend have been retreating — that their city was about to be bombed.

The local mayor rushed out to meet Poroshenko on Friday to discuss measures that could “avoid bloodshed, and the use of air strikes and heavy artillery”.

But separatists in control of Ukraine’s coal mining capital said locals were not taking any chances after three months of fighting that has claimed 550 lives and sparked the worst East-West stand-off since the height of the Cold War.

Rebel commander Igor Strelkov told reporters that a “spontaneous evacuation” was also under way in the neighbouring separatist bastion of Lugansk.

“I would say that one car in five is filled with refugees,” said a young separatist volunteer manning a roadblock around 20 kilometres east of Donetsk.

‘Kremlin puppets’ 

Political talk shows in the city on Friday were filled with people questioning tactics, and demanding to know why most of the rebels were allowed to slip out of the towns and cities they had abandoned in recent days.

Poroshenko had last Saturday proclaimed the seizure of Slavyansk — the symbolic heart of the uprising — a turning point in a conflict set off by the ousting in February of Ukraine’s former Kremlin-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, and Russia’s subsequent seizure of Crimea.

In a rare move, EU leaders this weekend joined Russia in trying to dampen Kiev’s newfound bravado and convince Poroshenko to launch direct truce talks with the separatists.

The EU said Saturday that it was also adding 11 separatist leaders to the names of 61 Russians and pro-Kremlin Ukrainians blacklisted for their roles in enflaming the conflict.

But Poroshenko’s top aide said that all talks with the rebels were off.

“Those who call themselves leaders of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk are nobodies — they are puppets, servants of the Kremlin,” presidential administration chief Yuriy Lutsenko told Kiev’s Inter television.

“The only possible side that can be involved in negotiations is Russian President Vladimir Putin,” he said.

The possibility of such talks being held as early as Sunday emerged when the Brazilian government said the Ukrainian leader had accepted an invitation to attend the World Cup football final in Rio de Janeiro, where Putin will also be present.

Poroshenko’s office could not immediately confirm the announcement.

Poroshenko’s security headaches have been compounded by the threat of Ukraine going bankrupt if it fails to quickly adopt deeply unpopular austerity measures demanded under the terms of an emergency Western bailout deal.

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) team was due to leave Kiev on Saturday after checking whether Ukraine had done enough to merit the second tranche of a $17 billion (12.5 billion euro) loan as part of a broader $27 billion international package.

Standard and Poor’s delivered a rare dose of good news to Poroshenko by revising to “stable” from “negative” Ukraine’s credit rating based on the conviction that the IMF would not abandon Kiev at this stage.

“Full disbursement of the IMF programme and related multilateral lending should enable Ukraine to meet its external financing needs over the next year,” S&P said.

The two-year international programme is meant to make up for a $15 billion package Russia had extended to former president Yanukovych for his November decision to ditch a historic EU trade and association pact.

His overthrow and the new government’s signature of the European deal helped provoke the ongoing insurgency that saw Russia withdraw its aid.