OSCE negotiators free one inspector from Ukrainian rebels
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE negotiators late Sunday walked out of a rebel-occupied
town hall in east Ukraine with just one of eight of their inspectors being held
as "prisoners of war" by pro-Kremlin separatists, an AFP journalist
on the scene saw.
The two negotiators left the four-storey grey building in
the town of Slavyansk with the freed Swedish officer.
The three made no comment to waiting reporters before
driving away in a white car marked with an OSCE logo.
Negotiations continued for the release of the other seven
European inspectors -- from Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Denmark --
and four Ukrainian army officers who were seized with them on Friday, a rebel
spokeswoman told AFP.
She said the Swede was freed first because he suffers from
diabetes.
Hours earlier, the rebels had put the eight inspectors from
the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in front of the cameras
of a media conference they called in the town hall.
Speaking through one of their number, a German officer, the
Europeans asserted their diplomatic status to the scores of local and foreign
journalists.
With four armed rebels watching over them as they spoke, the
group said they were in good health.
They said they had been captured by the insurgents on Friday
around four kilometres (two miles) outside Slavyansk, as they had been about to
return to the regional hub city of Donetsk.
"We are OSCE officers with diplomatic status,"
German officer Axel Schneider said.
"I cannot go home of my own free will."
Schneider added that he did not know the whereabouts of the
four Ukrainian officers also detained.
Earlier, the local rebel leader in the town, Vyacheslav
Ponomaryov, told AFP and a small group of other reporters the OSCE observers
were considered "prisoners of war".
"In our town, where a war situation is going on, any
military personnel who don't have our permission are considered prisoners of
war."
Ponomaryov, who was wearing a pistol in a holster and was
escorted by two armed bodyguards, claimed in the same interview that the
observers "are not our hostages -- they are our guests".
He added that the group's driver, who had been seized with
them on Friday, had been released.
He repeated in the interview that the men would be freed
only in exchange for the release by Kiev's authorities of arrested pro-Moscow
militants.
And he stressed that the rebels did not consider the
detained men part of the main OSCE monitoring mission deployed in Ukraine.
The OSCE headquarters in Vienna has said the military
verification mission is a separate operation to its main observer activity, and
is under German command.
The pan-European security body said two monitors from its
main mission were also held briefly Sunday at a checkpoint in eastern Ukraine,
before Ukrainian police secured their release.
Asked about Russia's promise to try to convince the
pro-Kremlin rebels to release the observers, Ponomaryov said: "I have no
direct contact with Moscow."
Ponomaryov also said that rebels had separately
"arrested" three Ukrainian officers -- a colonel, a major and a
captain -- who he said had been sent towards Slavyansk on a spying mission.
"There were a total of seven in their group and we
arrested three of them. We will swiftly get the four others," he said.
The three officers were being kept in Slavyansk. Ukraine's
SBU security service confirmed they had been seized. Russian television showed
the men cuffed, with tape over their eyes, and in their underclothes.
The rebel mayor said there would be no negotiation with Kiev
over any of the imprisoned Ukrainians because the pro-Kremlin insurgents see
the capital's Western-backed government as illegitimate.
"There will be no contact with Kiev, only through the
intermediary of the OSCE," he said. Ukraine's authorities, he said,
"understand only the language of force".
Slavyansk has become the epicentre of the military standoff
in eastern Ukraine where pro-Russian militants are defying Western pressure to
exit occupied buildings.
The Ukrainian army has set up a siege operation around the
town of 110,000 to prevent reinforcements reaching the rebels but has stressed
it will take a measured response in its military operations in a bid to avoid
civilian casualties.
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