A leading human rights group says it has strong evidence Ukraine attacked populated areas of Donetsk with cluster bombs, banned by many other states.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) accuses the army of using the deadly weapon, which scatters bomblets, to shell the rebel-held eastern city earlier this month.
Ukraine did not sign up to the 2008 global treaty banning cluster bombs.
But a Ukrainian security spokesman said Ukraine did not use "banned weapons" or shell civilian areas.
Meanwhile, new talks are due on Ukraine's gas dispute with Russia.
Officials are set to meet in Brussels to discuss Ukraine's gas debt and payment schedule amid hopes that Russia will restore supplies cut in June, before the onset of winter.
Russia is accused of using gas as a political tool against Ukraine, where a conflict with pro-Russian separatist rebels in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk has claimed at least 3,700 lives since April.
A ceasefire agreed on 5 September has not ended the fighting.
In a separate development, a senior Polish official has alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested partitioning Ukraine with Poland six years ago in a conversation with Donald Tusk, who was Poland's prime minister at the time.
'Shocking to see'In its report, the New-York based rights group said use of cluster munitions in Donetsk this month was "widespread".
"While it was not possible to conclusively determine responsibility for many of the attacks, the evidence points to Ukrainian government forces' responsibility for several cluster munition attacks on Donetsk," it found.
A Swiss employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Laurent DuPasquier, was killed outside his office in Donetsk on 2 October in an attack "that included use of cluster munition rockets", HRW added.
"It is shocking to see a weapon that most countries have banned used so extensively in eastern Ukraine," said Mark Hiznay, senior arms researcher at HRW.
Responding to the report, Ukrainian "anti-terrorist operation" spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov described the accusations as "utter nonsense".
"We do not use banned weapons," he told AFP news agency by telephone. "Neither do we shell civilian neighbourhoods because this endangers lives."
The Convention on Cluster Munitions has been ratified by 86 states while a further 28 have signed it. Russia and the US are among those that have not signed it.
EU mediationEU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger is mediating at Tuesday's talks in Brussels, amid concerns the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine could affect supplies to EU states.
Talks between Mr Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Milan on Friday apparently made some progress.
Mr Poroshenko said a preliminary agreement had been reached on a price of $385 (£239; 301 euros) per 1,000 cubic metres until 31 March.
The figure is much higher than the average amount of $350 that Gazprom charges EU companies but $100 less than Russia had originally demanded.
But a Russian government source close to the gas talks told Reuters: "The devil is in the detail. I don't think that Russian gas will be delivered soon to Ukraine."
'Split Poland'Poland's parliamentary speaker, Radoslaw Sikorski, alleged Mr Putin had suggested dividing up Ukraine, in talks in 2008 with Donald Tusk, who will shortly take over as president of the European Council.
"He wanted us to become participants in this partition of Ukraine..." Mr Sikorski told US website Politico. "He [Putin] went on to say Ukraine is an artificial country and that Lwow [Lviv] is a Polish city and why don't we just sort it out together."
"We made it very, very clear to them - we wanted nothing to do with this," Mr Sikorski added.
Speaking later, Mr Sikorski said his words to Politico had been "over-interpreted", without elaborating.
Refusing to comment on the interview directly, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian newspaper RBK there was a "lot of nonsense around".
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Ukraine faces cluster bomb claim
Dengan url
http://worldartikelku.blogspot.com/2014/10/ukraine-faces-cluster-bomb-claim.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Ukraine faces cluster bomb claim
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Ukraine faces cluster bomb claim
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar