A senior rebel leader in eastern Ukraine has claimed the Minsk peace deal will fail unless Kiev recognises the independence of rebel-held territory.

Aleksandr Zakharchenko told the BBC he wanted to expand the self-proclaimed republic he leads in Donetsk.

He said the Minsk ceasefire agreement brokered by the West was not being properly implemented by the government.

"Ukraine doesn't want to resolve all the issues," he said.

"If you agree to resolve something, then you need to act and move forward, and resolve everything that's included.

"If that doesn't happen, then the Minsk Agreement is unfulfilled, and it renders all the meetings in Minsk pointless," he added.

He also accused Kiev of preparing for war - a charge it denies.

"According to the information we've received, Kiev could once again provoke the conflict very soon, attacking Donetsk or any another town of the Donetsk People's Republic."

Under the Minsk agreement, backed by European leaders, Ukraine's government claimed that the rebel-held east would remain part of the country.

Under the Minsk agreement both sides were due to withdraw heavy troops

Violence in Donetsk and other eastern regions has escalated in recent days

But Mr Zakharchenko insisted it must be legally recognised as an independent territory.

He said: "Ukraine has stopped paying welfare, pensions and other payments that are obligatory for a state to pay its citizens.

"They don't do it, so they've de facto recognised us."

The BBC's Tom Burridge reports that throughout this week shelling could be heard in central Donetsk, a sign that the Minsk deal had not brought real peace to the region.

Both sides were largely thought to have adhered to the ceasefire deal - until a recent escalation of fighting near Donetsk and Shyrokyne.

Ukraine and the rebels both claim to have withdrawn heavy weapons from the line of contact but both sides have accused each other of planning fresh offensives and strengthening military hardware.

On Friday, the UN Human Rights Commissioner said at least 6,116 people have been killed since the fighting broke out a year ago.

(BBC News)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew is urging Greece to reach a deal with its creditors, warning that a default would "create immediate hardship for Greece" and damage the world economy.

Greece is in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and European authorities to receive the final 7.2 billion euro ($7.8 billion) installment of its financial bailout. Creditors are demanding that Greece produce credible reforms before releasing the money.

The country has relied on loans from the international community since 2010. Without more bailout money, Greece could miss two debt payments due to the IMF in May and run out of cash to pay government salaries and pensions.

"It's something that the European and global economies don't need — to have another crisis," Lew told reporters Friday.

Fears that Greece could default and abandon the euro currency group sent shockwaves through global markets Friday. After being down nearly 360 points, the Dow Jones industrial average recovered a bit to finish down 279.47, a drop of 1.5 percent.

Lew said he stressed in a series of one-on-one meetings, including discussions with Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, that it was urgent that the debt negotiations be resolved quickly.

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Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew speaks during a news conference during the International Monetary Fund …

The status of the Greek debt talks was a prime topic on the sidelines at the spring meetings of the 188-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister lending organization, the World Bank. Those meetings were scheduled to conclude Saturday with financial officials addressing a variety of issues — from the weak global economy to a stalled effort to overhaul IMF voting procedures.

The negotiations over Greece's debt have proved contentious. Greek officials said they planned to meet with creditors Saturday in a search for "common ground."

Some finance officials expressed their frustration with Greece's new left-wing government, elected in January. Luis de Guindos, Spain's economy minister, said the Greek government had sent "contradictory" signals regarding the negotiations.

"We have wasted very precious time over the last three or four weeks," de Guindos said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The communication of the Greek government has not been great. They have not made a lot of friends," he said, while adding, "I expect and I hope that the communication will improve."

Greece wasn't the only country that drew criticism at the finance meetings: China and Japan complained that the United States has still not approved the legislation needed to put into effect IMF reforms that have been stalled for the past five years. The reforms would boost the IMF's resources to deal with financial crises and increase the voting power of fast-emerging economies such as China, Brazil and India.

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Spain's Economy Minister Luis de Guindos speak during an interview with The Associated Press at …

Lew said he had assured his fellow finance ministers that the Obama administration still believed it would soon overcome objections from Republican lawmakers and win congressional approval for the IMF reforms. The United States is the IMF's largest shareholder and congressional approval is the last hurdle to putting the reforms into effect.

Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said in a speech Friday that the failure to pass the IMF quota reforms had damaged America's image.

Growing frustration has caused other major countries to examine alternatives to break the stalemate in ways that might reduce America's global influence.

Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso, speaking to reporters after the G-20 meeting, noted the growing dissatisfaction: "There are other camps who are saying we can leave the U.S. behind and do something else. However, there's a voting power being held by the United States, so it's not realistic to think about other ways."

As the largest shareholder, the United States is the only country that can veto key IMF actions.

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Associated Press writers Harry Dunphy, Christopher S. Rugaber and Matthew Pennington contributed to this report.

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Policemen keep watch at a site after a third explosion in Jalalabad April 18, 2015. REUTERS/Parwiz

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An Afghan woman walks at the site of a suicide attack in Jalalabad April 18, 2015. The suicide bomb …

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomb blast in Afghanistan's eastern city of Jalalabad killed 33 people and injured more than 100 outside a bank where government workers collect salaries, the city's police chief said on Saturday.

Police were investigating whether there was a second explosion after people rushed to the scene to help, the police chief, Fazel Ahmad Sherzad, told a news conference.

"It was a suicide attack," Sherzad said, adding that police had yet to determine if the attacker had worn the explosives or had placed them in a car. "It is early to say what kind of suicide bomber."

Taliban insurgents denied responsibility, although they have claimed earlier killings in a wave of attacks coinciding with the sharp drawdown of foreign troops.

"It was an evil act. We strongly condemn it," the Islamist militants' spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told Reuters.

For the first time since the hardline Islamist Taliban movement was ousted from power in 2001, Afghan forces are fighting with little support from NATO troops.

NATO, which at its peak had 130,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, has only a few thousand left, involved mainly in training and special operations.

Police said a third blast that shook Jalalabad was a controlled detonation after experts discovered another bomb close to the scene of the first explosion.

(Reporting by Rafiq Sherzad in Jalalabad and Mirwais Harooni in Kabul; Writing by Jessica Donati; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Wochit
Thousands in Germany Protest Against Europe-U.S. Trade Deal

By Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Thousands of people marched in Berlin, Munich and other German cities on Saturday in protest against a planned free trade deal between Europe and the United States that they fear will erode food, labor and environmental standards.

Opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is particularly high in Germany, in part due to rising anti-American sentiment linked to revelations of U.S. spying and fears of digital domination by firms like Google.

A recent YouGov poll showed that 43 percent of Germans believe TTIP would be bad for the country, compared to 26 percent who see it as positive.

The level of resistance has taken Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and German industry by surprise, and they are now scrambling to reverse the tide and save a deal which proponents say could add $100 billion in annual economic output on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Berlin, a crowd estimated by police at 1,500 formed a human chain winding from the Potsdamer Platz square, past the U.S. embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate to offices of the European Commission.

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People dressed in costumes take part in a demonstration against the Transatlantic Trade and Investme …

In Munich, police put the crowd at 3,000, while organizers Attac estimated it at 15,000. Hundreds also marched in Leipzig, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and other European cities on what Attac hailed as a "global day of action" against free trade, though the protests appeared to be largest in Germany.

"I think this deal will open the door to genetically-modified foods here," said Jennifer Ruffatto, 28, who works with handicapped people and was pushing her baby in a stroller. "Companies will gain from this at the expense of people."

Helmut Edelhauesser, a 52-year-old from Brandenburg, said he would prefer a free trade deal with Russia.

"The U.S. push for world domination is unacceptable," he told Reuters. "Obama sends out drones to kill people and wins the Nobel peace prize. This has to stop."

Marchers held up posters reading "People have a right to food not profits" and "Beware the TTIP trap - companies win, people lose!"

After the excesses of the Gestapo secret police under the Nazis and the Stasi in communist East Germany, Germans are also particularly sensitive to official surveillance. Revelations in 2013 that the U.S. had bugged Merkel's mobile phone provoked outrage across the country.

Merkel has spoken out repeatedly in favor of TTIP, but her coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), are deeply divided. Their leader Sigmar Gabriel, the economy minister and a TTIP convert, has promised a formal party vote on any deal.

(Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)