WarSclerotic

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Ukraine’s security chief ordered a full call-up of reserve troops Sunday morning, as Russian troops took control of the Crimea peninsula and the bloodless clash threatened to explode into fighting.

Andriy Parubiy told reporters that the council had ordered the defense ministry to “call on all those that armed forces need at the moment across Ukraine,” adding that the mobilization was to “ensure the security and territorial integrity of Ukraine”.

Earlier in the day, a convoy of hundreds of Russian troops were spotted heading toward the regional capital of Simferopol.

Russian troops took over the strategic Black Sea peninsula on Saturday without firing a shot and the new government in Kiev has been powerless to react.

On the road from Sevastopol, the Crimean port where Russia maintains a naval base, to Simferopol on Sunday morning, AP journalists saw 12 military trucks carrying troops, a Tiger vehicle armed with a machine gun and also two ambulances.

Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, announced late Saturday that he had ordered Ukraine’s armed forces to be at full readiness because of the threat of “potential aggression.” He also said he had ordered stepped-up security at nuclear power plants, airports and other strategic infrastructure.

On Crimea, however, Ukrainian troops have offered no resistance.

Russian military forces operating in Crimea were reported to have taken weapons from two Ukrainian military posts, according to a Ukrainian Defense Ministry sources cited by the Interfax news agency. The Russian troops were said to have urged military personnel at the posts to side with the “legitimate” leaders of the Crimean Peninsula.

The new government came to power last week following months of pro-democracy protests against the now-fugitive president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his decision to turn Ukraine toward Russia, its longtime patron, instead of the European Union.

Ukraine’s population of 46 million is divided in loyalties between Russia and Europe, with much of western Ukraine advocating closer ties with the EU, while eastern and southern regions look to Russia for support. Crimea, a semi-autonomous region that Russia gave to Ukraine in the 1950s, is mainly Russian-speaking.

The Russian move into the Crimean peninsula Saturday led to international calls for Moscow to pull back its troops.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations asked an emergency session of the Security Council “to do everything possible now” to stop Russia’s “aggression” as its troops took over the strategic Crimea region.

But action by the UN’s most powerful body appears unlikely. As a permanent member, Russia has veto power and can block the council from adopting any resolution criticizing or sanctioning Moscow.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call to “urgently engage in direct dialogue with the authorities” in Kiev.

However, Putin threatened that if there is an escalation of violence against Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Russia “will take necessary measures in [the] framework of international law,” Interfax reported.

Calling the situation in Ukraine “as dangerous as it is destabilizing,” US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power told the council, “It is time for the Russian military intervention in Ukraine to end.”

Power and other members of the council called for sending international monitors to Ukraine as soon as possible to observe the situation, and Power warned that “Russia’s provocative actions could easily push the situation beyond the breaking point.” She also mentioned work on an international mediation mission to send to Ukraine.

The Security Council met in emergency session for the second straight day on the rapidly developing events in Ukraine. It even met briefly in an open, televised session, despite objections from Russia, then resumed meeting behind closed doors.

Current council president, Luxembourg Ambassador Sylvie Lucas, said members stressed the importance of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the need to lower tensions, in addition to the need for international monitors.

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said the new government in Kiev needs to get away from “radicals” and warned that “such actions they’re taking could lead to very difficult developments, which the Russian Federation is trying to avoid.”

Churkin also accused the West of interfering in the recent Kiev demonstrations that turned violent amid tensions over the decision by Ukraine’s now-fugitive president, Viktor Yanukovych, to turn Ukraine toward Russia, its longtime patron, instead of the European Union.

Russia has given refuge to Yanukovych, who fled a week ago.

Churkin said Russia was intervening at the request of pro-Russian authorities in the semi-autonomous Crimea, which is largely Russian-speaking and home to Russia’s Black Sea navy fleet.

British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, who called for Saturday’s meeting, told reporters afterward that “there is no justification for Russia’s military activities in the last 48 hours.”

Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson called the situation in Ukraine “very difficult and very dangerous” and said they were seeing “negative signs, serious signs, risks of escalation.”

Ukraine’s UN ambassador, Yuriy Sergeyev, asked the other four permanent Security Council members — the US, Britain, France and China — for help, adding that Russia had rejected Ukraine’s proposal to hold immediate bilateral consultations.

When asked later whether Ukraine is at war with Russia, Sergeyev said, “No. We are not at war. We are trying to avoid any clashes. We are being provoked.”

Ban, the UN chief, said earlier Saturday that he is “gravely concerned about the deterioration of the situation” in Ukraine and called for “full respect for and preservation of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the country.

Ban later spoke by telephone with Putin, and a statement from Ban’s office said, “It is crucial to restore calm and proceed to an immediate de-escalation of the situation.”

“Cool heads must prevail, and dialogue must be the only tool in ending this crisis,” Ban said.

Ban planned to meet Sunday in Geneva with his special envoy Robert Serry, the Netherlands’ first ambassador to Ukraine.

Ban on Friday asked Serry to go to Crimea as part of a fact-finding mission. However, after consulting with authorities in the region, Serry decided that a visit was not possible.

Lyall Grant said his understanding was that Serry couldn’t go because airspace above Crimea has been closed. Eliasson called the decision “purely logistical.”

AFP contributed to this report

As he heads to the United States this weekend for a meeting Monday at the White House with US President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ready in principle to agree to Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework proposals for extending peace talks with the Palestinians, but is far less sanguine about the US-led international negotiations with Iran over its rogue nuclear program, The Times of Israel has learned.

On the understanding that Kerry’s framework proposals constitute a non-binding basis for extending the talks beyond the current April deadline, and with the provision that both sides can express their reservations over some of its clauses, the prime minister will not have to be pressured into endorsing the document, sources close to the prime minister said.

Netanyahu remains concerned about the US-drafted security proposals — which he believes do not constitute an adequate means for confronting terrorism in the West Bank, Israel’s Channel 10 News reported Friday — and opposes any formal legitimization of Palestinian claims to Jerusalem, the sources made clear, however. His office also said Thursday that Netanyahu “does not intend to evacuate any settlement or uproot a single Israeli” under a permanent accord, since he insists that settlers on the far side of a two-state border must be given the choice of evacuating or staying on in a Palestinian state — a stance first reported by The Times of Israel in January.

While Jerusalem anticipates that Obama, at their talks on Monday, will want to focus heavily on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Netanyahu is anxious to emphasize his concerns over the content of a permanent nuclear accord with Iran, which is currently being negotiated between Tehran and the P5+1 world powers. Primarily, Israel’s Channel 10 news reported Friday, Netanyahu is adamant that Iran must be denied any ongoing capacity to enrich uranium, since he fears that, as it improves its enrichment technology, it would be able to speed rapidly from low-level enriched uranium to nuclear weapons-grade enrichment levels. Obama, by contrast, has said he can envisage Iran maintaining the capacity to carry out low-level enrichment, under a highly intrusive inspection and supervision regime.

An Iranian worker at the Uranium Conversion Facility at Isfahan, 410 kilometers, south of Tehran. The conversion facility in Isfahan reprocesses uranium ore concentrate, known as yellowcake, into uranium hexaflouride gas. The gas is then taken to Natanz and fed into the centrifuges for enrichment. (photo credit: AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Netanyahu, who called the interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program, signed in Geneva in November and implemented in January, a “historic mistake,” is also concerned that the provisions of that deal did not prevent Iran from improving its enrichment centrifuges, and did not cover weaponization and missile development. If a permanent accord is to ensure that Iran never attain nuclear weapons, as the chief US negotiator Wendy Sherman said in Jerusalem last weekend, a permanent accord would have to cover those aspects, Netanyahu believes.

While the Israeli prime minister, who will address the annual AIPAC pro-Israel lobby’s annual Washington conference on Tuesday, is inclined to accept Kerry’s peace framework, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to resist it when he meets with Obama on March 17. Abbas’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Thursday that there was “no point” in extending the negotiations past April.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas arrives at the Elysee Palace in Paris on February 21, 2014. (photo credit: Alain Jocard/AFP)

At the end of two days of talks with Kerry in Paris late last month, Abbas was reportedly left fuming over Kerry’s framework proposals. The US secretary reportedly suggested Abbas form a Palestinian capital in the neighborhood of Beit Hanina, not all of East Jerusalem, as the Palestinians have demanded. Kerry also suggested that Israel keep 10 settlement blocs as part of any territorial exchange, according to Al Quds, the most widely read Palestinian daily, on Wednesday. The Jordan Valley would not be part of a future Palestinian state, Palestinian sources told the paper, nor would there be an international force stationed there. And Kerry reportedly demanded that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.

The report, which received no official confirmation, said Abbas exploded with rage over the US secretary’s proposals, and described them as “insanity.” The PA president threatened to “overturn tables” and to go back on the flexibility he had shown in order to facilitate the US-led peace efforts, according to Al Quds.

The paper suggested that Abbas’s subsequent invitation to meet Obama at the White House was a form of damage control on the part of the Americans.

A view of the Jordan Valley (photo credit: CC-BY heatkernel/Flickr/File)

The explosive nature of the meeting reported in the Palestinian daily, however, was far removed from the image projected by Abbas to the media in Paris, where he described American peace efforts as “extremely serious” and his talks with Kerry as ”constructive.”

Israel’s Channel 2 news reported last month that the PA has decided to reject Kerry’s proposals and instead launch a global diplomatic and legal assault on Israel. The PA, it said, was setting up teams to wage diplomatic war against Israel in “every conceivable” forum, including pushing for boycotts of Israel and seeking legal rulings against Israel via international courts in The Hague.

Unless Kerry significantly changed the formulation of his proposals, the report said, the Palestinians would reject his overtures, confident that much of the international community will consider them to be the injured party and hold Israel responsible for the failure of peace efforts. The Palestinians are furious that Kerry is offering them a state “with no borders, no capital, no [control over] border crossings… and without Jerusalem,” the TV report said, quoting Palestinian sources.