Saturday, July 26, 2014

As nations seek more MH17 access, rebels reportedly getting impatient


Even as investigators say they need more access to bodies and wreckage from last week's Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash in eastern Ukraine, the pro-Russian rebels that control the territory say they're tiring of having any probe there, a spokesman for a monitoring group said Friday.
With the site still not secure eight days after the crash, and victims' remains still lying with debris, nations such as Netherlands are pressing to send their own police and investigators to the scene. Various negotiations are under way.But rebels controlling the area -- the same rebels that Ukraine and the United States accuse of downing the plane and killing the 298 people aboard -- hinted to an international monitoring group that they've nearly had enough, even with the small amount of investigators they've already let in."We were given the indication ... that their patience is almost wearing out," said Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which has had a small team touring the site for days. "They're saying maybe another week and then they don't know what would happen."

That's not likely to please a number of nations that say a proper investigation still hasn't begun, including Netherlands, whose officials say they're negotiating with the Ukrainian government to send 40 Dutch military police to search for more bodies.
The rebels "are encouraging us to pass the message up the command chain, if you will, that a group of experts, perhaps 25 or 30, should get here soon to oversee ... movement of the debris," Bociurkiw, who was with the OSCE team in eastern Ukraine, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Friday
Monitor: Personal effects suddenly appearing at wreck sites
Accusations over who was responsible for bringing down the passenger jet, which was headed from Amsterdam to Malaysia, continue to be traded by the Ukrainian government, pro-Russian rebels and officials in Moscow and Washington.
Flight 17 was downed on July 17 by a suspected surface-to-air missile over eastern Ukraine, where groups of pro-Russian rebels are fighting Ukrainian government forces. The rebels have denied allegations from Ukraine and the West that they brought down the commercial airliner using equipment supplied by Russia.
On Friday, the OSCE team again toured the crash site, returning to a recently discovered section of fuselage from the plane. This time -- unlike Thursday -- victims' passports and other documentation were there, Bociurkiw said.
"We can't draw any conclusions. But for sure, those were not there the last time we were there," he said. "Perhaps someone placed it there. We don't know."
No Ukrainian government or international force has secured the site, raising concerns about tampering or pilfering.
The OSCE team on Friday toured with a few experts from Australia and, for the first time, some forensic experts from Netherlands.
CNN's Phil Black has reported from the area that there appears to be no ongoing effort to find and retrieve victims' bodies. Though many corpses have been recovered already, Bociurkiw said the group still has seen human remains among the debris several times this week.

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