World

KIEV — Crimea’s declaration of independence Monday from Ukraine triggered the toughest Western sanctions against Russia since the Cold War — with Washington and the European Union retaliating with asset freezes and travel bans and US President Barack Obama vowing to “increase the cost” if the Kremlin does not back down.

Ukraine’s turmoil has become Europe’s most severe security crisis in years and tensions have been high since Russian troops seized control of Crimea, a strategic Black Sea peninsula that has now decided to merge with Russia. Russian troops are also massed near the border with Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s acting president raised tensions on the ground by calling for the activation of some 20,000 military reservists and volunteers across the country and for the mobilisation of another 20,000 in the recently formed national guard.

In the Crimean capital of Simferopol, ethnic Russians applauded the Sunday referendum that overwhelmingly called for secession and for joining Russia. Masked men in body armour blocked access for most journalists to the parliament session that declared independence, but the city otherwise appeared to go about its business normally.

The US, EU and Ukraine’s new government do not recognise the referendum held Sunday in Crimea, which was called hastily as Ukraine’s political crisis deepened with the ouster of pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych following months of protests and sporadic bloodshed. In addition to calling the vote itself illegal, the Obama administration said there were “massive anomalies” in balloting that returned a 97 per cent “yes” vote for joining Russia.

Obama warned that Russia could face more financial punishment.

“If Russia continues to interfere in Ukraine, we stand ready to impose further sanctions,” Obama said.

One of the top Russian officials hit by sanctions mocked Obama.

“Comrade Obama, what should those who have neither accounts nor property abroad do? Have you not thought about it?” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted. “I think the decree of the president of the United States was written by some joker.”

Moscow considers the vote legitimate and Russian President Vladimir Putin was to address both houses of parliament Tuesday on the Crimean situation.

In Kiev, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov vowed that Ukraine will not give up Crimea.

“We are ready for negotiations, but we will never resign ourselves to the annexation of our land,” a somber-faced Turchynov said in a televised address to the nation. “We will do everything in order to avoid war and the loss of human lives. We will be doing everything to solve the conflict through diplomatic means. But the military threat to our state is real.”

The Crimean referendum could also encourage rising pro-Russian sentiment in Ukraine’s east and lead to further divisions in this nation of 46 million.

A delegation of Crimean lawmakers was set to travel to Moscow on Monday for negotiations on how to proceed. Russian lawmakers have suggested that formally annexing Crimea is almost certain — with one saying it could happen within days.

“We came back home to Mother Russia. We came back home, Russia is our home,” said Nikolay Drozdenko, a resident in Sevastopol, the key Crimean port where Russia leases a naval base from Ukraine.

The Crimean parliament declared that all Ukrainian state property on the peninsula will be nationalised and become the property of the Crimean Republic. It gave no further details. Lawmakers also asked the United Nations and other nations to recognise it and began work on setting up a central bank with $30 million in support from Russia.

The United States announced sanctions against seven Russian officials, including Rogozin, Putin’s close ally Valentina Matvienko who is speaker of the upper house of parliament and Vladislav Surkov, one of Putin’s top ideological aides. The Treasury Department also targeted Yanukovych, Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov and two other top figures.

The EU’s foreign ministers slapped travel bans and asset freezes against 21 officials from Russia and Ukraine following Crimea’s referendum. The ministers did not immediately release the names and nationalities of those targeted by the sanctions.

“We need to show solidarity with Ukraine and therefore Russia leaves us no choice,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters in Brussels before the vote. “The ‘Anschluss’ of Crimea cannot rest without a response from the international community.”

He was referring to Nazi Germany’s forceful annexation of Austria.

But markets appeared to signal that the Western sanctions lacked punch — with bourses both in Russia and Europe rising sharply on relief that they won’t hit trade of business ties.

“So far the sanctions seem fairly toothless and much less severe than had been expected last week,” said Kathleen Brooks, research director at Forex.com. “From the market’s perspective, the biggest risk was that the referendum would trigger tough sanctions against Russia that could lead to another Cold War.”

Moscow, meanwhile, called on Ukraine to become a federal state as a way of resolving the polarisation between Ukraine’s western regions — which favour closer ties with the 28-nation EU — and its eastern areas, which have long ties to Russia.

In a statement Monday, Russia’s foreign ministry urged Ukraine’s parliament to call a constitutional assembly that could draft a new constitution to make the country federal, handing more power to its regions. It also said country should adopt a “neutral political and military status”, a demand reflecting Moscow’s concern about the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and possibly integrating closer politically and economically with the EU.

Russia is also pushing for Russian to become one of Ukraine’s state languages alongside Ukrainian.

In Kiev, Ukraine’s new government dismissed Russia’s proposal Monday as unacceptable, saying it “looks like an ultimatum”.

The new government in Kiev was established after pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia last month after three months of protests culminated in deadly clashes.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya visited NATO headquarters in Brussels to request technical equipment to deal with the secession of Crimea and the Russian incursion there.

NATO said in a statement that the alliance was determined to boost its cooperation with Ukraine, including “increased ties with Ukraine’s political and military leadership”.

KUALA LUMPUR — The co-pilot of a missing Malaysian jetliner spoke the last words heard from the cockpit, the airline’s chief executive said on Monday, as investigators consider suicide by the captain or first officer as one possible explanation for the disappearance.

No trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been found since it vanished on March 8 with 239 people aboard. Investigators are increasingly convinced it was diverted perhaps thousands of kilometres off course by someone with deep knowledge of the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial navigation.

A search unprecedented in its scale is now under way for the plane, covering an area stretching from the shores of the Caspian Sea in the north to deep in the southern Indian Ocean.

Airline chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya also told a news conference that it was unclear exactly when one of the plane’s automatic tracking systems had been disabled, appearing to contradict the weekend comments of government ministers.

Suspicions of hijacking or sabotage had hardened further when officials said on Sunday that the last radio message from the plane — an informal “all right, good night” — was spoken after the system, known as “ACARS”, was shut down.

“Initial investigations indicate it was the co-pilot who basically spoke the last time it was recorded on tape,” Ahmad Jauhari said on Monday, when asked who it was believed had spoken those words.

That was a sign-off to air traffic controllers at 1.19am, as the Beijing-bound plane left Malaysian airspace.

The last transmission from the ACARS system - a maintenance computer that relays data on the plane’s status — had been received at 1.07am, as the plane crossed Malaysia’s northeast coast and headed out over the Gulf of Thailand.

“We don’t know when the ACARS was switched off after that,” Ahmad Jauhari said. “It was supposed to transmit 30 minutes from there, but that transmission did not come through.”

Vast search corridors

Police and a multi-national investigation team may never know for sure what happened in the cockpit unless they find the plane, and that in itself is a daunting challenge.

Satellite data suggests it could be anywhere in either of two vast corridors that arc through much of Asia: one stretching north from Laos to the Caspian, the other south from west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra into the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia.

Aviation officials in Pakistan, India, and Central Asian countries Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan — as well as Taliban militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan — said they knew nothing about the whereabouts of the plane.

“The idea that the plane flew through Indian airspace for several hours without anyone noticing is bizarre,” a defence ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan, who are seeking to oust foreign troops and set up an Islamic state, said the missing plane had nothing to do with them.

“It happened outside Afghanistan and you can see that even countries with very advanced equipment and facilities cannot figure out where it went,” he said. “So we also do not have any information as it is an external issue.”

China, which has been vocal in its impatience with Malaysian efforts to find the plane, called on its smaller neighbour to “immediately” expand and clarify the scope of the search. About two-thirds of the passengers aboard MH370 were Chinese.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he had spoken to Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak by telephone and had offered more surveillance resources in addition to the two P-3C Orion aircraft his country has already committed.

Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said diplomatic notes had been sent to all countries along the northern and southern search corridors, requesting radar and satellite information as well as land, sea and air search operations.

The Malaysian navy and air force were also searching the southern corridor, he said, and US P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft were being sent to Perth, in Western Australia, to help scour the ocean.

Focus on crew

The plane’s disappearance has baffled investigators and aviation experts. It vanished from civilian air traffic control screens off Malaysia’s east coast less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysian authorities believe that, as the plane crossed the northeast coast and flew across the Gulf of Thailand, someone on board shut off its communications systems and turned west.

That has focused attention on the crew. Malaysian police are trawling through the backgrounds of the pilots, flight and ground staff for any clues to a possible motive in what they say is now being treated as a criminal investigation.

Asked if pilot or co-pilot suicide was a line of inquiry, Hishammuddin said: “We are looking at it.” But he added it was only one of the possibilities under investigation.

Police special branch officers searched the homes of the captain, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and first officer, 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid, in middle-class suburbs of Kuala Lumpur close to the international airport on Saturday.

Among the items taken for examination was a flight simulator Zaharie had built in his home.

A senior police official familiar with the investigation said the flight simulator programmes were closely examined, adding they appeared to be normal ones that allow users to practise flying and landing in different conditions.

A second senior police official with knowledge of the investigation said they had found no evidence of a link between the pilot and any militant group.

“Based on what we have so far, we cannot see the terrorism link here,” he said. “We looked at known terror or extremist groups in Southeast Asia. The links are not there.”

North or south?

Electronic signals between the plane and satellites continued to be exchanged for nearly six hours after MH370 flew out of range of Malaysian military radar off the northwest coast, following a commercial aviation route across the Andaman Sea towards India.

The plane had enough fuel to fly for about 30 minutes after that last satellite communication, Ahmad Jauhari said.

Twenty-six countries are involved in the search, stretching across much of Asia. Three French civil aviation experts involved in the search for an Air France jet that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009 arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Monday to help.

A source familiar with official US assessments of satellite data being used to try to find the plane said it was believed most likely it turned south sometime after the last sighting by Malaysian military radar, and may have run out of fuel over the Indian Ocean.

The Malaysian government-controlled New Straits Times on Monday quoted sources close to the investigation as saying data collected was pointing instead towards the northern corridor.

ISTANBUL — Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen has described a crackdown on his followers by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as “ten times worse” than anything meted out after coups by the secularist army.

Erdogan accuses Gulen’s Hizmet (“Service”) network, which has built quiet influence in the police and judiciary over decades, of orchestrating a graft investigation which has grown into one of the biggest challenges of his 11-year rule.

He has responded by tightening government control of the courts and reassigning thousands of police officers and hundreds of prosecutors and judges, in what his aides say is a drive to cleanse the judiciary of Gulen’s influence.

In his first major interview in Turkish media since the graft scandal burst into the open in December, the US-based cleric, whose worldwide network of followers say they number in the millions, said he was the victim of a campaign of slander.

“In the wake of the September 12, 1980 military coup, the authorities tracked me for six years as if I were a criminal. Raids were carried out. Our friends were harassed. In a sense, it became a sort of lifestyle for us to live under constant surveillance in a coup atmosphere,” he said.

“What we are seeing today is 10 times worse than what we saw during the military coups,” he was quoted as saying in an interview with the Zaman newspaper and its English-language edition, both close to his movement. (www.todayszaman.com)

The accusation is a strong one, given Turkey’s history.

Turkey’s army toppled four governments in the second half of the 20th century before Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party brought a decade of economic and political stability. Rights groups accused the generals of widespread torture and killings after coups in 1960 and 1980.

Erdogan, however, has couched the feud in equally historic terms, evoking the memory of one of his political heroes Adnan Menderes, a prime minister overthrown by the military in 1960 and hanged along with two ministers a year later.

Menderes eased curbs on religion, much as Erdogan has done, allowing thousands of mosques to reopen, opened new religious schools and legalised the call to prayer in Arabic. He too was accused of increasingly authoritarian rule.

“Back then they called Menderes a dictator. Today they say the same for me. Back then they called Menderes an enemy of freedom. Today, they say that about me,” he told thousands at an election rally in the southwestern province of Aydin, where Menderes was born, evoking his memory more than a dozen times.

March 30 municipal elections will be the first test of Erdogan’s popularity at the ballot box since nationwide protests last summer and since the graft scandal erupted.

Opinion polls suggest his support remains high, after a decade of strong economic performance, but he will be seeking a vote for his AK Party exceeding the 39 per cent of five years ago. In this, he may be aided by an opposition that is divided and lacking clear leadership.

“Either we claim Menderes’ battle for democracy or we will be siding with those who have martyred him. This election also has such a meaning,” Erdogan thundered at the rally.

Historic struggle

Gulen’s network helped cement the AK Party’s rise, using its influence in the judiciary to help break the army’s grip with a series of coup plot trials; but the marriage of convenience has fallen apart as the former allies turn on each other.

“This time, we face similar treatment but at the hands of civilians who we think follow the same faith as us,” Gulen said. “I should acknowledge that this inflicts extra pain on us. All we can do is say ‘This, too, shall pass,’ and remain patient.”

This month’s polls are followed by a presidential race five months later in which Erdogan had long been expected to stand, although his party could also change its internal rules to let him serve a fourth term as prime minister, casting his strong leadership as necessary to finish off the feud with Gulen.

Erdogan has described those behind the graft scandal as “leeches”, decrying what appears to have been the wiretapping over years of thousands of phones including his own by a “parallel state” bent on using blackmail to wield influence.

“The parallel state situation, I can say, is a peak in terms of organising a plot, the peak of all troubles,” he told Turkey’s Kanal 7 TV in an interview late on Sunday, describing it as worse than an attempt in the courts in 2008 to close the AK Party on charges of seeking to introduce Islamic rule.

“What really troubles us is this: legal or illegal how come the prime minister of a country is wiretapped? A court verdict to wiretap the prime minister is out of the question, you can’t do this ... not for the president, not for the chief of staff. These [people] have become so low, so small,” he said.

In his latest headache as he campaigns around the country for the local elections, a Twitter account behind a string of leaks in the scandal posted on Thursday what it presented as prosecution files accusing four former government ministers of involvement in bribery and smuggling.

Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the documents.

KANO, Nigeria — At least 100 people were killed in the religiously divided centre of Nigeria this weekend, local officials said on Sunday, as tensions between Muslim-dominated herdsmen and mostly Christian farmers again turned deadly.

About 40 assailants armed with guns and machetes stormed the villages of Angwan Gata, Chenshyi and Angwan Sankwai, attacking locals in their sleep and torching their homes, Yakubu Bitiyong, a lawmaker at the Kaduna state parliament told AFP.

“We have at least 100 dead bodies from the three villages attacked by the gunmen” overnight Friday-Saturday, he said, adding that scores of residents were also injured.

Some of the victims “were shot and burnt in their homes while others were hacked with machetes”, Bitiyong said.

According to a local government official who asked not to be named, around 2,000 people displaced by the attacks were now sheltering in a primary school in Gwandong village.

Kaduna state police spokesman Aminu Lawan confirmed the attacks but refused to give a casualty toll or say who was behind the violence.

Local residents, mostly Christians, blamed the bloodshed on Muslim Fulani herdsmen, who have been accused of similar raids in the past.

Chenshyi village was the worst affected with at least 50 people killed, said Adamu Marshall, a spokesman for the Southern Kaduna Peoples’ Union, a regional political and cultural body.

“Many people are still in the bush, afraid to return to their burnt homes,” he told AFP, confirming a total toll of at least 100 dead.

“The attackers looted food and set fire to the barns during the attacks,” he added.

Kaduna State Governor Mukhtar Ramalan Yero was to cut short a visit to the United States in response to the violence, his spokesman said.

Fulani leaders have for years complained about the loss of grazing land which is crucial to their livelihood, with resentment between the herdsmen and their agrarian neighbours rising over the past decade.

Most of the Fulani-linked violence has been concentrated in the religiously divided centre of the country, where rivalries between the herdsmen and farmers have helped fuel the unrest.

Nigeria is almost evenly split between the Muslim majority north and largely Christian south. Religion and ethnicity underpin daily life.

Kaduna and the neighbouring state of Plateau make up Nigeria’s so-called middle belt where the two religions often clash.

The weekend attacks in the flashpoint region recall the sectarian-fuelled violence following the last presidential elections in 2011, which saw southern Christian Goodluck Jonathan defeat northern Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari.

Buhari’s supporters took to the streets, claiming the vote was rigged. Their protest became violent and Human Rights Watch estimated that more than 500 people were killed, most of them Muslims, in southern Kaduna.

The run-up to the next presidential vote in February 2015 has again been dominated by a row between northern Muslims and Christians, this time in Jonathan’s own ruling party, where northerners claim a candidate from their regions should run.

Jonathan has yet to officially declare that he will stand for re-election but his apparent refusal to step aside has prompted a series of defections of governors, lawmakers and senators to the opposition.

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysian investigators are trawling through the backgrounds of the pilots, crew and ground staff who worked on a missing jetliner for clues as to why someone on board flew it perhaps thousands of kilometres off course, the country’s police chief said.

Background checks of passengers on Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 have drawn a blank, but not every country whose nationals were on board has responded to requests for information, police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told a news conference on Sunday.

No trace of the Boeing 777-200ER has been found since it vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board, but investigators believe it was diverted by someone who knew how to switch off its communications and tracking systems.

Malaysia briefed envoys from nearly two dozen nations and appealed for international help in the search for the plane along two arcs stretching from the shores of Caspian Sea to the far south of the Indian Ocean.

“The search area has been significantly expanded,” said Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein. “From focusing mainly on shallow seas, we are now looking at large tracts of land, crossing 11 countries, as well as deep and remote oceans.”

The plane’s disappearance has baffled investigators and aviation experts. It vanished from civilian air traffic control screens off Malaysia’s east coast less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.

Malaysian authorities believe that as the plane crossed the country’s northeast coast and flew across the Gulf of Thailand, someone on board shut off its communications systems and turned sharply to the west.

Electronic signals it continued to exchange periodically with satellites suggest it could have continued flying for nearly seven hours after flying out of range of Malaysian military radar off the country’s northwest coast, heading towards India.

“The plane had enough fuel to fly for about seven-and-a-half to eight hours,” Malaysian Airlines’ Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said.

Malaysian officials briefed ambassadors from 22 countries on the progress of the investigation and appealed for international cooperation, diplomats said on Sunday.

Although countries have been coordinating individually, the broad formal request marked a new diplomatic phase in a search operation thought increasingly likely to rely on the sharing of sensitive material such as military radar data.

“The meeting was for us to know exactly what is happening and what sort of help they need. It is more for them to tell us, ‘please put in all your resources’,” T.S. Tirumurti, India’s high commissioner to Malaysia, told Reuters.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak also telephoned his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, to ask for Indian help corroborating possible paths taken by the jet, an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

On Saturday, police special branch officers searched the homes of the captain, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and first officer, 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid, in middle-class suburbs of Kuala Lumpur close to the international airport.

An experienced pilot, Zaharie has been described by current and former co-workers as a flying enthusiast who spent his off days operating a life-sized flight simulator he had set up at home.

Police chief Khalid said investigators had taken the flight simulator for examination by experts.

Earlier, a senior police official said the flight simulator programmes were closely examined, adding they appeared to be normal ones that allow players to practice flying and landing in different conditions.

Police sources said they were looking at the personal, political and religious backgrounds of both pilots and the other crew members. Khalid said ground support staff who might have worked on the plane were also being investigated.

A second senior police official told Reuters investigators had found no links between Zaharie, a father of three grown-up children and a grandfather, and any militant group.

Postings on his Facebook page suggest the pilot was a politically active opponent of the coalition that has ruled Malaysia for the 57 years since independence.

A day before the plane vanished, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to five years in prison, in a ruling his supporters and international human rights groups say was politically influenced.

Asked if Zaharie’s background as an opposition supporter was being examined, the first senior police officer would say only: “We need to cover all our bases.”

Malaysia Airlines has said it did not believe Zaharie would have sabotaged the plane, and colleagues were incredulous.

“Please, let them find the aircraft first. Zaharie is not suicidal, not a political fanatic as some foreign media are saying,” a Malaysia Airlines pilot who is close to Zaharie told Reuters. “Is it wrong for anyone to have an opinion about politics?”

Co-pilot Fariq was religious and serious about his career, family and friends said.

The two pilots had not made any request to fly together.

With no clear motive established as to why someone diverted the plane, Khalid said all possibilities — hijack, sabotage, or personal or psychological problems of someone on board — were being investigated. Transport Minister Hishammuddin said authorities had not received any ransom or other demand.

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Crimeans voted Sunday in a referendum to join former political master Russia as tensions escalated in eastern Ukraine in the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.

Ukraine’s new leaders and the West have branded as “illegal” the vote in the strategic Black Sea peninsula that has been under the de facto control of Russian forces for weeks.

US Secretary of State John Kerry demanded that Moscow pull back its forces to their bases in Crimea in return for constitutional reforms in Ukraine to protect minority rights.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would respect the outcome of the referendum, but the European Union condemned the vote and said it would be deciding on sanctions against Russia on Monday.

In Crimea itself, Russian flags were being flown everywhere from city buses to convoys of bikers roaming the streets as thousands of people went to the polls.

“This is a historic moment,” Sergiy Aksyonov, the local pro-Moscow prime minister, told reporters after casting his ballot in the regional capital Simferopol.

Cossacks and pro-Moscow militias were patrolling outside polling stations and Russian troops guarded the unofficial border between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine.

In the flashpoint eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, pro-Russian groups in favour of holding a similar referendum stormed the local security and legal headquarters demanding the release of their self-appointed “governor,” an AFP reporter said.

Ukraine’s new government and most of the international community except Russia have said they will not recognise a result expected to be overwhelmingly in favour of Crimea’s secession.

Kerry told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a phone call that the crisis in Ukraine “can only be resolved politically”, according to a State Department official.

“As Ukrainians take the necessary political measures going forward, Russia must reciprocate by pulling forces back to base, and addressing the tensions and concerns about military engagement,” the official said.

Putin, meanwhile, told German Chancellor Angela Merkel he would “respect the choice of Crimea’s residents” and accused Ukrainian authorities of fanning tensions in mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s interim President Oleksandr Turchynov, who last month replaced ousted pro-Kremlin leader Viktor Yanukovych after three months of protests, also accused Russia of fanning tensions in eastern Ukraine as a way of justifying an invasion.

“The result has been pre-planned by the Kremlin as a formal justification to send in its troops and start a war that will destroy people’s lives and the economic prospects for Crimea,” he said.

The European Union said the referendum was “illegal and illegitimate” and again condemned Moscow’s “unprovoked violation” of Ukraine’s sovereignty.

There were signs however of a possible easing in Crimea as Ukraine said its forces on the peninsula had reached a temporary truce with Russia to lift the blockade around Ukrainian bases.

But there was no sign of the agreement being implemented at the Perevalnoye base outside Simferopol, where AFP reporters saw Russian forces still in place.

Tensions remained high in other parts of Ukraine’s southeast, where three activists have been killed in Donetsk and Kharkiv in recent days.

Around 1,000 pro-Moscow activists rallied in Donetsk to support Crimea’s referendum and 2,000 turned out in Kharkiv with a large Russian flag and a sign reading “Our Homeland is the USSR.”

‘Not going to vote’ 

Crimea is inhabited mostly by ethnic Russians and was seized by Russian forces after last month’s ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin leader, sparking a dangerous security crisis on Europe’s eastern border.

Some Crimeans said they would spoil their ballots in protest and there was a call on social media for people to cook vareniki — Ukrainian dumplings — instead of going out to vote.

Crimean authorities denied irregularities but accredited journalists including AFP were prevented from entering some polling stations in the port city of Sevastopol and in Simferopol, and several people were seen voting before polls opened.

Foreign observers were present although the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it would not monitor because it was not officially invited by Ukraine’s national government.

Crimea’s indigenous Muslim Tatar community, which was deported to Central Asia in Soviet times, largely boycotted the referendum.

“Of course we are not going to vote,” said Dilyara Seitvelieva, a community leader in Bakhchysaray, an historic Tatar town.

“The situation is very dangerous,” she told AFP.

Mostly ethnic Russians were seen casting their votes at a polling station in Bakhchysaray.

“We have waited years for this moment,” said 71-year-old Ivan Konstantinovich. “Everyone will vote for Russia.”

 ‘We are in Russia!’ 

Voters can choose to become part of Russia or retain more autonomy but stay in Ukraine — a vote for the status quo is not an option.

Preliminary results were expected soon after polls close at 8pm (1800 GMT).

The referendum committee said turnout was at 64 per cent two-thirds of the way through voting.

Rehearsals for planned celebrations have included the slogan “We are in Russia!” beamed on to the government building in Simferopol, leaving no doubt about the expected outcome.

In Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet since the 18th century, the mood was celebratory and patriotic Russian military songs blared.

Preparations to become part of Russia — a process that could take months — are to begin this week if the referendum result is pro-Moscow.

There has been no armed confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian forces but several incidents involving journalists and pro-unity activists condemned by Amnesty International as “extremely worrying”.

‘Crimean Spring’ 

While the West has been powerless to stop Crimea’s annexation, Russia faces a painful round of sanctions against top officials that Washington and EU nations are set to unveil on Monday and it could be ostracised or even ejected from the Group of Eight leading world powers.

Local authorities are calling the vote a “Crimean Spring” but many Crimeans are concerned about a possible legal vacuum and economic turmoil.

One immediate worry is about the availability of cash and there have been long queues outside banks with Crimeans rushing to withdraw their money.

Crimea would not automatically join Russia after the vote and Ukraine’s government has said it cannot survive since it depends on electricity, energy and water supplies from the mainland.

In Bakhchysaray, Anna Ivanovna, 70, said she had voted to join Moscow, but was apprehensive.

“Yes, we will be Russians. It’s good but at the same time, at my age, it’s hard to change countries,” she said.

KABUL — In his final address to Afghanistan’s parliament Saturday, President Hamid Karzai told the United States its soldiers can leave at the end of the year because his military, which already protects 93 per cent of the country, was ready to take over entirely.

He reiterated his stance that he would not sign a pact with the United States that would provide for a residual force of US troops to remain behind after the final withdrawal, unless peace could first be established.

The Afghan president has come under heavy pressure to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement, with a council of notables that he himself convened recommend that he sign the pact. The force would train and mentor Afghan troops, and some US Special Forces would also be left behind to hunt down Al Qaeda.

All 10 candidates seeking the presidency in April 5 elections have said they would sign the security agreement. But Karzai himself does not appear to want his legacy to include a commitment to a longer foreign troop presence in his country.

Karzai was brought to power in the wake of the 2001 US-led invasion and subsequently won two presidential elections — in 2004 and again in 2009. But he has in recent years espoused a combatative nationalism, with his hour-long speech Saturday no exception.

“I want to say to all those foreign countries who maybe out of habit or because they want to interfere, that they should not interfere,” he said.

Karzai said the war in Afghanistan was “imposed” on his nation, presumably by the 2001 invasion, and told the United States it could bring peace to Afghanistan if it went after terrorist sanctuaries and countries that supported terrorism, a reference to Pakistan.

Pakistan has a complicated relationship with the Taliban. It backed the group before their 2001 overthrow, and although now it is at war with its own militants, Afghan insurgents sometimes find refuge on its territory.

Karzai told parliament, which was holding its opening session for this term, that security forces were strong enough to defend Afghanistan without the help of international troops.

Karzai steps down after next month’s presidential elections. Under Afghanistan’s constitution, he is banned from seeking a third term.

He came to power in December 2001 following an international agreement signed in Bonn, Germany, and was confirmed by a Loya Jirga or grand council that selected a transitional government to rule while preparing for nationwide elections. He subsequently won two presidential elections.

Relations between Karzai and the United States have been on a downward spiral since his re-election in 2009, in which the United States and several other countries charged widespread fraud. Karzai in turn accused them of interference.

In his speech Karzai again urged Taliban insurgents to join the peace process, while accusing Pakistan of protecting the Taliban leadership. He suggested that Pakistan was behind the killing earlier this year of a Taliban leader who supported the peace process. No one has taken responsibility for the attack.

Throughout his speech Karzai spoke of his accomplishments over the last 12 years, saying schools were functioning, rights were being given to women, energy projects were coming online and the Afghan currency had been stabilised. Karzai said that when he first took power his country was isolated and nothing was functioning.

“I know the future president will protect these gains and priorities and will do the best for peace in the country and I, as an Afghan citizen, will support peace and will cooperate.”

Afghanistan’s current parliament plans to tackle a number of key issues, including a controversial law on the elimination of violence against women.

Meanwhile the Taliban released two Afghan army personnel, captured during last month’s deadly raids on two military checkpoints, the ministry of defence said in a statement Saturday. The men were freed after elders in the region interceded on their behalf and the military agreed to hand over to the Taliban the bodies of their colleagues left behind on the battlefield.

The attacks on February 23 left 21 Afghan army personnel dead. Several insurgents were also killed.

KUALA LUMPUR — A missing Malaysian airliner was apparently deliberately diverted and flown for hours after vanishing from radar, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday, stopping short of confirming a hijack but taking the excruciating search for the jet into uncharted new territory.

Najib said investigators believed “with a high degree of certainty” that systems relaying Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s location to air traffic control were manually switched off before the jet veered westward in a fashion “consistent with deliberate action”.

But a grave-looking Najib told a press conference watched around the globe that he could not confirm whether the plane had been forcibly taken over.

“Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear: we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate from its original flight path,” he said.

He called it an “excruciating time for the families of those on board”.

The new information appeared to cast aside a host of theories on the plane’s disappearance, which has transfixed the world and left frustrated families of the 239 passengers and crew baying for scarce information.

Dauntingly large search area 

Previous scenarios included a sudden midair explosion, catastrophic equipment or structural failure, or a crash into the South China Sea.

But Najib’s announcement opened a whole new avenue of speculation including an attempted 9/11-style attack.

The 9/11 hijackers had turned off the transponders of three of the four planes that were commandeered. Transponders transmit data on a plane’s location to air traffic controllers.

MH370’s transponder was manually shut off, Najib said.

Final satellite communication with the Boeing 777, scheduled to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, came more than six-and-a-half hours after it vanished from civilian radar at 1:30am on March 8, said Najib.

That would equate with the time Malaysia Airlines has said the plane would have run out of fuel.

Investigators had concluded the plane was diverted west from its original flight path, and thus a search in the South China Sea would end, Najib said, but would continue in the Indian Ocean.

But the new search zone is now dauntingly large — Najib said the plane could be anywhere from Kazakhstan to the southern Indian Ocean.

Earlier, a senior Malaysian military official had told AFP investigators believed the plane was commandeered by a “skilled, competent and current pilot” who knew how to avoid radar, stopping short of speculating whether a hijacker or crew member was suspected.

‘Something beyond 9/11’

Dozens of ships and aircraft from 14 countries have been deployed across a huge search zone since MH370 went missing.

As the search continues, investigators will focus on who would have diverted it and why.

Malaysian security officials were earlier embarrassed by revelations that two Iranian men had managed to board the plane using stolen European passports.

It could also bring new attention on Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and his First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27.

Malaysian reporters told AFP they witnessed police enter Zaharie’s house on Saturday, staying for two hours. Police declined comment to AFP.

An Australian television station had days earlier broadcast an interview with a South African woman who alleged she and a friend were invited into the cockpit of a flight Fariq co-piloted in 2011 — a breach of post-9/11 security rules.

The New York Times quoted American officials with knowledge of the investigation saying the plane saw wild fluctuations in altitude after it changed course.

“Investigations should focus on criminal and terrorist motives,” said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

“It is likely that the aircraft was hijacked by a team knowledgeable about airport and aircraft security. It is likely they are supported by a competent team from the ground.”

But Gerry Soejatman, a Jakarta-based independent aviation analyst, told AFP Saturday’s revelations make a possible terror motive “extremely difficult to understand”.

“If that was deliberate, we may be dealing with something beyond the mission planning for 9/11,” he said.

Most of the plane’s passengers were Chinese and the Malaysian leader’s remarks did little to ease the nerves of anguished relatives gathered at a hotel in Beijing.

“I feel [Malaysia Airlines] has been playing a role in the incident,” said Wen Wancheng, whose son was aboard, suspecting “a conspiracy”.

He remained hopeful his son was alive.

The airline defended its handling of the crisis, which it called “an unprecedented situation for Malaysia Airlines and for the entire aviation industry”.

The plane has one of the best safety records of any jet, and the airline also has a solid record.

Malaysia has not been the target of any notable terror attacks, but terror analysts say it is home to several individuals alleged to be operatives of militant Islamic groups such as Al Qaeda linked Jemaah Islamiyah.

KIEV — Ukraine accused Russia on Saturday of invading a region bordering Crimea and vowed to use “all necessary measures” to ward off an attack that came on the eve of the peninsula’s breakaway vote.

The dramatic escalation of the most serious East-West crisis since the Cold War set a tense stage for the referendum on Crimea’s secession from Ukraine in favour of Kremlin rule — a vote denounced by both the international community and Kiev.

The predominantly Russian-speaking Black Sea region of two million people was overrun by Kremlin-backed troops days after the February 22 fall in Kiev of a Moscow-backed regime and the rise of nationalist leaders who favour closer ties with the West.

President Vladimir Putin defended Moscow’s decision to flex its military muscle by arguing that ethnic Russians in Ukraine needed “protection” from violent ultranationalists who had been given free reign by the new Kiev administration.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had told Secretary of State John Kerry in London on Friday that Moscow “has no, and cannot have, any plans to invade the southeast region of Ukraine”.

The invasion reported by the Ukrainian foreign ministry was small in scale and concerned a region that lies just off the northeast coast of Crimea called the Arabat Spit.

The Ukrainian ministry said 80 Russian military personnel had seized a village on the spit called Strilkove with the support of four military helicopters and three armoured personnel carriers.

The Ukrainian “foreign ministry declares the military invasion by Russia and demands the Russian side immediately withdraw its military forces from the territory of Ukraine”, it said in a statement,

“Ukraine reserves the right to use all necessary measures to stop the military invasion by Russia.”

There was no immediate response to Ukraine’s announcement from Moscow but Washington’s UN representative Samantha Power called any new Russian troop movement in south Ukraine an “outrageous escalation”.

Russia isolated at UN 

Ukraine’s claim of the invasion came on the second successive day of bloodshed that has now killed three people in the heavily Russified southeast of the culturally-splintered nation of 46 million.

The latest deadly violence flared on Friday evening in Kharkiv when a group of nationalists opened fire on pro-Russian supporters in the heart of the eastern industrial city of 1.4 million.

No one was hurt but police said the pro-Russians then chased the gunmen to the headquarters of a far-right group called Patrioty Ukrainy (Ukrainian Patriots).

Police said a pro-Russian protester and a passerby were killed when the nationalists holed up inside the building opened fire. Six others were hurt — including one officer — when police arrived at the scene.

That incident and another death in the Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv on Thursday prompted the Russian Foreign Ministry — its forces already conducting snap drills on Ukraine’s doorstep — to report “receiving many requests to protect peaceful citizens” in its western neighbour.

“These requests will be considered,” the Russian foreign ministry said.

Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchynov gravely told a session of parliament that Moscow’s repeated warnings meant “there is now a real danger of a [Russian] invasion on the territory of Ukraine”.

Yet Russia’s seizure of Crimea and ominous threats against the rest of Ukraine found the nuclear power staring in the face of international isolation when it was abandoned by key geopolitical ally China at a crucial UN Security Council vote on the crisis in New York.

Russia was alone in vetoing a US-drafted UN Security Council resolution reaffirming that the Crimean referendum “can have no validity” and that Ukraine must remain a sovereign state.

“Russia, isolated, alone and wrong, blocked the resolution’s passage,” Power said. “This is a sad and remarkable moment.”

The measure was backed by 13 of the Security Council’s 15 members, including Jordan, and saw Russia’s geopolitical ally China abstain — a massive blow that could shake the Kremlin’s confidence in the face of its deteriorating relations with the West.

‘No common vision’ 

The rugged diamond-shaped region that has housed tsarist and Kremlin navies since the 18th century is widely expected to vote in favour of Kremlin rule after its lawmakers declared independence from Kiev earlier this month.

The referendum comes in direct response to three months of deadly protests that toppled the pro-Kremlin president and brought to power a new European-leaning team in Kiev that threatens to shatter Putin’s dream of rebuilding a post-Soviet empire.

Kiev has denounced the Crimean vote as illegal but is also warily watching as separatist sentiments spread through other southeastern regions with centuries old cultural and trade links to Russia.

Yet Moscow backs the ballot despite a new round of painful sanctions against top Russian officials that Washington and EU nations are expected to unveil on Monday.

The worst standoff in East-West relations since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall found no solution when Kerry and Lavrov locked horns in six-hour talks in London about Crimea that ended in a handshake and an agreement that the two sides remained as far as before.

“We have no common vision of the situation,” Lavrov grimly told reporters.

A US diplomat said Kerry found himself at checkmate when Lavrov “made it clear that President [Vladimir] Putin is not prepared to make any decision regarding Ukraine until after the referendum on Sunday”.

That timing is far too late for US officials who accuse Crimea’s separatist leaders and their Kremlin backers of holding the vote at “gunpoint”.

Crisis hits Russia’s tycoons 

The European Union will debate travel bans and asset freezes on Monday against Russian officials held responsible for threatening Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Germany’s Bild daily cited Western diplomats as saying that the Russians on the joint US-EU travel ban list will include Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Kremlin Chief-of-Staff Sergei Ivanov along with other top Putin advisers.

US officials have stressed that Putin himself is not on the sanctions list.

The threat of Western economic sanctions saw the Moscow stock market lose 11 per cent of its value last week — a drop that the Wealth-X research firm said cost the country’s top 10 tycoons $6.6 billion and may put additional domestic pressure on Putin.

ISTANBUL — Prime Minister Rece[ Tayyip Erdogan accused protesters on Thursday of trying to sow chaos to influence local elections after Turkey’s worst day of civil unrest since anti-government demonstrations swept the nation last summer.

Late on Wednesday, a man in Istanbul was shot dead and a police officer in eastern Turkey suffered a fatal heart attack. Erdogan said demonstrators had “burned and destroyed” offices of his ruling AK Party in Istanbul.

“You were supposed to be democrats, pro-freedom. These are charlatans, they have nothing to do with democracy, they do not believe in the ballot box,” Erdogan said at an opening ceremony for an underground train line in the capital Ankara.

“They are saying let’s cause chaos and maybe we’ll get a result. But my brothers in Ankara and Turkey will give the necessary answer on March 30 [in the local polls],” he added.

Erdogan portrays the clashes, and a corruption scandal dogging his government, as part of an anti-government plot embracing foreign and domestic forces. He accuses Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally, of using influence in police and judiciary to engineer the graft inquiry to undermine him.

Gulen denies such intrigues. The cleric’s supporters accuse Erdogan of increasingly authoritarian conduct compromising liberal reforms of the first years of his 11 years in office.

Riot police clashed with demonstrators in several Turkish cities on Wednesday as mourners buried a teenager, wounded in the protests last June, whose death this week after nine months in a coma sparked a fresh wave of disturbances.

On Wednesday night, police fired water cannon, tear gas and rubber pellets on a major Istanbul avenue to stop tens of thousands of protesters reaching the central Taksim square. There were similar scenes in the centre of Ankara and in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir.

Officers in riot gear chased groups of protesters into side streets late into the night in Istanbul.

Deaths and injuries

An unidentified assailant shot dead a 22-year-old in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district late on Wednesday after a verbal dispute between two groups turned into a fight, the provincial governor’s office said in a statement.

It said one man suffered a gunshot wound to the hand and another a wound to the stomach during the gunfire. They were not in a critical condition.

In the eastern province of Tunceli, which also saw protests on Wednesday, a police officer died after suffering a heart attack, which the local governor’s office said occurred when protesters threw stones at his vehicle.

The local elections will be the first real test of Erdogan’s popularity since the Summer riots, the unfolding of the graft scandal and the power struggle with Gulen. Opinion polls suggest the prime minister, whose AK Party dominates the electoral map, remains fiercely popular, especially in the conservative Anatolian heartlands after a decade of rising prosperity.

The death on Tuesday of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan, who got caught up in street battles in Istanbul between police and protesters last June while going to buy bread for his family, has hit a raw nerve with many Turks.

Views of Wednesday’s events highlighted the polarised political atmosphere in Turkey. While Erdogan attacked anti-democratic forces “setting fire to the streets”, main opposition CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu held him responsible for the death of Elvan, whom he described as a “martyr of democracy”.

“I urge all our citizens, please don’t respond to the provocation. We will seek our rights through the democratic path,” he told reporters after visiting Elvan’s family.

In a written statement on Wednesday, Kilicdaroglu had accused Erdogan of a “dangerous provocation”, saying the prime minister saw “dragging Turkey into great disorder and an atmosphere of chaos as his only path to salvation”.

Speaking to Hurriyet Daily News about those comments, he said he had heard rumours that a fake assassination attempt could be staged against Erdogan to shore up his support.

At Wednesday’s funeral, crowds chanting “Tayyip! Killer!” held up photos of Elvan earlier in the day as his coffin, draped in red and covered in flowers, was carried through the streets of Istanbul’s working class Okmeydani district for burial.

Those attending the protests said Erdogan’s silence on Elvan’s death, in contrast to President Abdullah Gul and other public figures who issued messages of condolence, highlighted how out of touch he was with a large segment of Turkish society.