Surrender talks set with Ukraine\\\'s separatists as standoff lasts into Easter

A senior mediator from Europe's OSCE security body is due to start negotiating the surrender of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, although hopes for a rapid end to the crisis are limited. Gunmen occupying public buildings in Donetsk and other Russian-speaking border towns refuse to recognise an accord in Geneva on Thursday by which Russia, Ukraine and Kiev’s US and EU allies agreed that the OSCE should oversee the disarmament of militants and the evacuation of occupied facilities and streets. The coming days may determine whether unrest following the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president can be contained. Russia, which annexed Crimea last month in the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War, denies directing the separatists or planning to invade. Western powers threaten more economic sanctions if Moscow does not persuade the militants to give up. Germany’s foreign minister, however, sounded a cautious note on Sunday. “We’ve already exhaustively discussed the sanctions issue,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Bild newspaper, calling for more effort to go into avoiding an “escalation” of the conflict. Reliant on Russian gas and eager to keep exporting to Russia, Berlin and other EU governments are less keen on sanctions than the United States, which threatened new measures on Friday. Mark Etherington, a British diplomat who is deputy head of the OSCE special mission in Ukraine, is due to start talks in the eastern city of Donetsk on Sunday, officials of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said. After a meeting in Kiev on Saturday with diplomats from the four parties to the Geneva accord, Swiss envoy Christian Schoenenberger, whose country is chair of the OSCE, said its monitors had already spoken to the separatists: “For the time being the political will is not there to move out,” he said, according to Reuters.