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AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER Tony Abbott hit out at the “shambolic” situation at the MH17 crash site as he demanded Russian President Vladimir Putin back up assurances with action.
Abbott and Putin spoke by telephone overnight in their first conversation since the Malaysia Airlines plane, carrying 298 people, crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, apparently shot down by pro-Russian rebels with a surface-to-air missile.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, British counterpart David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande also piled pressure on Putin over the weekend in phone calls.
While Abbott would not divulge details of what was discussed, he said the onus was now on Moscow to act, using its influence with pro-Russian separatists to ensure experts can access the site of the crash.
“To President Putin’s credit he did say all the right things. I want to stress what he said was fine,” Abbott told a press conference.
“The challenge now is to hold the president to his word. That is certainly my intention, and it should be the intention of the family of nations to hold the president to his word.”
Rutte talked with Putin on Sunday, with the Russian leader promising to help retrieve bodies and black boxes, a spokeswoman for Dutch government press service RVD told AFP.
Abbott has been particularly vocal among world leaders in his outrage at Russia’s perceived lack of cooperation in the investigation into the disaster.
He has branded the plane’s downing “a crime”, and accused Moscow of trying to wash its hands of the tragedy while failing to properly secure the crash site.
Moscow denies any involvement in the disaster.
Twenty-eight Australian nationals and nine residents were among the 298 people from a dozen countries on board who died.
Trains
On Sunday, pro-Russian militiamen in Ukraine loaded almost 200 bodies from the flight into refrigerated train wagons. A rebel chief said they were holding them until “the experts arrive”.
Canberra wants a full and impartial investigation in the disaster, but Abbott said a key difficulty was that there was “no-one in authority in charge on the ground”.
He said he had sent former defence force chief Angus Houston to be his personal envoy on the ground in Ukraine and to help recover the remains of the Australians killed.
Abbott added that the government was considering designating the MH17 disaster as a terrorist attack, which would trigger compensation payments to the families of Australian victims.
I wonder if someone did take him out 30 years ago, would Zimbabwe be the basket case he turned it into, or would some other “leader”, equally malingnant have just taken his place.
It’s tempting to write Africa off, but these things are not inevitable. The neighbours in Botswana were a landlocked, diamond rich former colony. Not an obvious candidate for success. And yet they were, partly because of Seretse Khama’s leadership, but also because people kept voting for him.
Unfortunately, for every relative success story there are 50 failed states. Nation building is hard and requires guts, enterprise, selflessness and vision. Mugabe wasn’t even asked to nation build. He was handed a fully functioning, very rich and successful country and managed to level it in less than a generation. That takes mean spiritness, stupidity, and the most crass selfishness and myopic vision, which, unfortunately, seems to be the calibre of most African leaders. Take and destroy is what they do and in the meantime, the west continues to do what the west does best. Assuage our feelings of western guilt by feeding, clothing and vaccinating the Africans left behind by their very own “leaders”.
We can write much of Africa off if the Chinese economy falters, And also, we can take Australia with it.
Problem with africa is its full of africans
“Unfortunate event”
In who’s eyes ????
Funny that at Mandela’s memorial when the camera would go to different world leaders the crowd would cheer or boo depending on who it was on. Mugabe got a massive cheer and Bush Jnr got a massive boo. Ya no your screwed when Mugabe gets a bigger cheer than ya!
It was an ANC crowd at the funeral & Mugabe was a big supporter if the ANC during apartheid times so I’d be sure that’s why he was cheered rather than for his recent policies.
That says a lot more about the crowd than it does about Bush Jr.
Whatever you can accuse Bush Jr. of, laying waste to his country, starving his people, killing the productive farmers and having an ugly greedy, mean wife isnt among them. An ANC crowd can turn into a vicious mob at the turn of a hair. Being rational abd discerning is not their thing.
Hurricane Katrina anyone? ;)
Sadly, probably the latter.
Problem with Africa is the tribal government system, and the mentality of it’s people.
@coom
Same could be said for a lot of countries..including ours!
Christina who wrote that paper? Dept of the Taoiseach?
While it is true that Robert Mugabe has a few character flaws, it cannot be denied that he is an active leader who stands up for his people. Much better than the shower we have running this country, he is. You can bet Robert Mugabe would have burned the bondholders and sent the IMF home with a flea in their ear.
Pity he didn’t have a fatal “accident” here.
Proably after totruring them first…Thing is we can elect another incompetant shower to govern us.Mugabe is there forever like a big black blood sucking tick on Zimbabwae.But then thats what happens if you let Marxist gun waving loons loose on a perfectly functioning and producing ,albeit not without is fault state.Turn it into a dictatorship that makes the previous oppression by whomever look like paradise.
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