Obama Demands Full Cooperation With MH17 Investigators

The US president called on his Russian counterpart to instruct separatists in Ukraine to ensure investigators full access to the wreckage of flight MH17. He also described the chaos surrounding the site as an "insult."

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, US President Barack Obama said it was clear that pro-Russian separatists who control the territory where flight MH17 came down last week were continuing to prevent international investigators from gaining full access to the wreckage.



Obama said it was also clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin had a great deal of influence over the separatists, and that as such, he bore direct responsibility to ensure that they stop tampering with the evidence and start fully cooperating with the investigators.



Obama also described the general chaos that appeared to surround attempts to begin that investigation and how the bodies were moved to refrigerated train carriages as an "insult" to the families who lost loved ones in the tragedy.



"President Putin says that he supports a full and fair investigation, and I appreciate those words, but they have to be supported by actions," Obama added.



Investigators examine bodies



This seemed to be in slight contrast to the assessment of Dutch experts charged with identifying the remains.



"I am very impressed about the work that was done over here. I think they did a hell of a job in a hell of a place," Peter van Vliet, the head of the Dutch investigation team said after they were shown the bodies in those refrigerated carriages in the eastern Ukrainian town of Torez on Monday.



However, earlier reports suggested that the bodies had not been properly secured in the wake of the crash and that items may have been stolen. The Ukrainian government confirmed that 282 bodies and 87 fragments were recovered from the crash site.



The Dutch investigators were hoping to get the bodies home for examination as soon as possible. As an interim step, they were seeking to get the train moved to a more secure location after fighting flared up in the city of Donetsk on Monday.



"We got the promise the train is going," Van Vliet said.



The government in Kyiv is hoping to get it moved to the government-held town of Kharkiv.



Accusations traded



Meanwhile, the West and Russia continued to trade accusations about what caused the crash. Ukrainian authorities and Western governments have accused pro-Russia separatists of shooting down the plane using a surface-to-air missile system supplied by Moscow.



Russia struck back on Monday, saying they had proof that Ukrainian surface-to-air missile systems were operating in the area in the days leading up to the crash. They also said they had evidence that a Ukrainian fighter jet had flown to within three to five kilometers (two to three miles) of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.



Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko denied this, telling US news broadcaster CNN that all Ukrainian planes in the area were on the ground at the time of the crash.



Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crashed last Thursday, killing all 298 people on board. Of these, 193 were Dutch nationals.



pfd/mg (AFPE, AP, Reuters, dpa)