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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