Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s plan to deploy armed police officers to the site of the Malaysian Air crash is set to focus on reclaiming bodies, amid concern their presence may risk increasing tension in the Ukrainian territory held by Russian-backed rebels.
Abbott yesterday said that his sole concern is to secure remains and bring them home. He said on Friday that 100 Australian Federal Police, some of them armed, and members of Australia’s military, were to be dispatched to recover bodies and evidence from Flight MH17, which crashed on July 17 near Donetsk in the country’s east, killing 298 passengers and crew.
“The last thing we want to do is place anyone in danger,” Abbott told reporters in Canberra yesterday. “That is our mission: to secure the remains, to assist the investigation and to obtain justice for the victims and their loved ones.”
Ukrainians’ desire for closer links with Europe, the US and their allies has long been a source of tension with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who intervened in Ukraine after pro-Kremlin former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych stepped down in February, fueling the five-month insurgency.
Russia accused the US of fomenting the uprising that led to Yanukovych’s ouster.
Spokesmen at the Russian Defense and Foreign ministries were not available when contacted.
“They must be nuts,” Joerg Forbrig, senior program officer for central and eastern Europe at the Berlin bureau of the German Marshall Fund of the US, said in a telephone interview, referring to Australia’s deployment of armed officers. “It’s a very dangerous proposal and will be seen as a provocation by the separatists and the Russians.”
A surface-to-air missile fired from territory held by the rebels shot down the plane, the US said, stopping short of alleging direct Russian involvement. Putin’s artillery is firing on Ukrainian military positions from inside Russia, a US Department of State spokeswoman said this week.
The Netherlands is to decide this weekend whether to send an unarmed police mission to help secure the crash site, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told parliament on Friday.
Abbott stressed on Friday that many of the Australian officers would not be armed and said the operation, which is part of an international mission that does not include the US, is expected to last no longer than a few weeks.
Australia needs an agreement to be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament to secure a team that may be armed, he said yesterday.
“Of course, I myself have moments when I think: Send in the marines,” Rutte told parliament in The Hague yesterday. “But we have to weigh the geopolitical ramifications that would have. This is not an area where this would remain without consequences. So we have to build coalitions with all players involved very carefully.”
The Netherlands is sending a separate mission of 40 unarmed military police to the site to help complete the forensic work and gather evidence, Rutte said this week.
The UK has sent one forensics specialist to Kiev and nine British scientists are working in the Netherlands to help identify bodies and secure evidence.
The UK is ready to offer logistical support and is keeping in close contact with the Australians and Dutch over how it can assist, though it will not be sending police or technicians to Ukraine, the British Foreign Office said.
“We believe a UK armed presence in eastern Ukraine would not be appropriate,” the Foreign Office said in an e-mailed statement. “The UK stands ready to provide constructive support to the mission.”
The Netherlands, Australia and Ukraine are considering proposing a UN resolution for an armed mission to secure the crash site, Dutch news agency ANP reported on Friday, citing diplomatic officials familiar with the matter that it did not identify.
Australia, a Security Council member, is to submit the resolution if officials at the site cannot perform duties in the next few days, it reported.
“I don’t think that you should assume that Minister Bishop will go from the Netherlands to New York,” Abbott said yesterday, referring to Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop. “You may well find that she goes back to Kiev in the next day or so.”
Australia earlier dispatched 90 police to help with the crash probe. The reinforcements will first fly to the Netherlands. There were 194 Dutch nationals and 27 Australians on Flight MH17.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko this week signed an accord under which the Netherlands would lead the international probe into the crash.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said a separate agreement was signed on Friday for an “Australian mission of civil police” to help protect the mission.
There was no mention from either Poroshenko or the foreign ministry on whether the Australians would be armed.
Dmitry Gau, the spokesman for the rebels, would not immediately comment on the Australian plans to carry firearms, when contacted by reporters.
The director of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels Fredrik Erixon warned against sending armed teams into eastern Ukraine to search for victims.
“There’s nothing normal in east Ukraine right now,” Erixon said in a phone interview. “Small events can trigger very large reactions from the rebels and the Russian government.”
The academic director at the German government’s Federal Academy for Security Policy in Berlin Karl-Heinz Kamp said the Australian military is experienced and would not take risks, especially in a situation “where some of the rebels are drunk.”
“The only way the Australians are going to send armed officers into rebel territory is if there’s some kind of back-room deal,” Kamp said by telephone. “It’s totally far-fetched, but if it’s true, maybe the Russians are under such pressure to do something and they told the rebels: ‘You have to accept this.’”
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