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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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14Mar14
Kerry Arrives in London for Crisis Talks on Crimea
Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here for talks on Friday with his Russian counterpart in an 11th-hour bid to ease the escalating crisis over the Kremlin's intervention in Crimea.
Western officials say they believe there is little chance of delaying the referendum that is to be held in Crimea on Sunday to decide if the peninsula should rejoin Russia. But they say that there may yet be an opportunity to negotiate a political resolution if Russia will refrain from taking the next step of formally annexing Crimea.
"We are going to give diplomacy every chance," a senior State Department official said, referring to Mr. Kerry's meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia. "What we would like to see is a commitment to stop putting new facts on the ground and a commitment to engage seriously on ways to de-escalate the conflict."
So far, there is no sign that President Vladimir V. Putin is prepared to take the "offramp" that the Obama administration has repeatedly offered. The Kremlin provided no hint of flexibility in a paper it sent to the State Department on Monday night that argued that Crimea's secession from Ukraine would be as legitimate as Kosovo's independence from Serbia, which the United States backed.
And in an episode of muscle flexing, Mr. Putin ordered a snap exercise involving thousands of troops near Ukraine's borders this week.
"It is clearly political coercion, at a minimum," said one Western official, who asked not be named because he was discussing intelligence reports.
Adding to the worries are reports that large numbers of Russians are being bused to the eastern Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv, Lugansk and Donetsk so that they can agitate against the new Ukrainian government under the supervision of Russian intelligence officers, the Western official added.
A major question for the United States and its partners is whether Mr. Putin's strategy is limited to protecting Russian interests in Crimea or is the first move in a broader campaign to undermine Ukraine's new government and weaken its authority over the eastern portion of the country.
One of Mr. Kerry's first orders of business in his meeting on Friday morning with Mr. Lavrov, the State Department official said, will be to ask Russia to have the Crimea referendum postponed. Most experts have little expectation that the referendum will be delayed asMoscow was the driving force behind arranging for the vote in the first place. And Mr. Kerry signaled earlier this week that he was prepared to carry on his diplomatic efforts after the referendum if Russia does not formally annex Crimea.
The outlines of the sort of political settlement the United States is seeking emerged on Wednesday when President Obama and Ukraine's interim prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, suggested that they would be willing to support expanded autonomy for Crimea if Russia were prepared to reverse its military intervention. Mr. Yatsenyuk also said his government would affirm an agreement that permits Russia to maintain a naval base there.
"We are going to present within the context of a unified, sovereign Ukraine the best offer for de-escalation that the Ukrainian people can accept and see if Russia is prepared to take that offramp," the State Department official said.
American officials said United States and European sanctions against Russia would be promulgated early next week if the referendum takes place on Sunday, and that more economic sanctions would be imposed if Russia escalates the conflict.
"If this referendum goes forward, there will be costs," the State Department official said. "If there is further military escalation there will be more costs. If there is not serious diplomacy there will be more costs."
Mr. Kerry also plans to ask Mr. Lavrov about Russia's snap military exercise, the State Department official said.
"We are very concerned," the State Department official said. "This is the second time inside of a month that Russia has chosen to mass large amounts of force on short notice without much transparency around the eastern borders of Ukraine. It certainly creates an environment of intimidation."
"That will be one question that will be asked," the official said. "What is meant by this?"
[Source: By Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, London, 14Mar14]
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