THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — President Barack Obama acknowledged for the first time Tuesday that Russia is unlikely to surrender control of the strategically important peninsula it annexed from Ukraine, conceding that Western condemnations have had little effect on Vladimir Putin.

Obama insisted the international community would never recognize Russia's takeover of Crimea. But he and European leaders, gathering in the Netherlands for a two-day nuclear summit, said a military response against Moscow was unlikely. The leaders focused much of their attention on keeping Russia from expanding elsewhere in Ukraine — even if that means enacting broad sanctions that have negative implications for their own economies.

"Some particular sanctions would hurt some countries more than others," Obama said during a joint news conference with the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte. "But all of us recognize that we have to stand up for a core principle that lies at the heart of the international order."

The president spoke a day after the U.S. and its partners in the Group of Seven economic forum declared that they were indefinitely suspending cooperation with Russia, which often joins with the G-7 nations to form the Group of Eight. The leaders also said they were prepared to impose sanctions on key sectors of the Russian economy, including its energy and defense industries.

Russia's brazen incursion into Ukraine has become a fierce challenge to Obama's leadership on the world stage. He arrived in the Netherlands, the first stop on a weeklong trip abroad, facing withering criticism from Republicans who have charged that the president underestimated Putin or misjudged the Russian leader's intentions.

Among those critics is Obama's former presidential rival Mitt Romney. The GOP politician declared during the 2012 campaign that Russia was America's top geopolitical foe — an assertion Obama dismissed as a relic of Cold War-era thinking.

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President Barack Obama Obama pauses before answering a question during a joint news conference with …

Obama took aim at Romney's assertion again Tuesday, using the opportunity to derisively cast Russia as little more than a "regional power" that threatens its allies, but not the U.S. The pointed comment appeared to take aim at what Western officials see as Putin's insecurity over Russia's standing in the world.

"Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors — not out of strength, but out of weakness," Obama said. Still, he added that "it would be dishonest to suggest there is a simple solution to what has already taken place in Crimea," where Russian troops are in control.

In a sign of how difficult it would be to roll back Russia's advances, Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea piled onto buses and began their journey to Ukrainian territory on Tuesday following a withdrawal order from the central government in Kiev. A former comrade saluted them from outside a base overrun by Russian forces.

While Putin did not attend the long-planned Nuclear Security Summit, his provocative actions in Ukraine dominated the two days of talks in The Hague. Western nations have used their long-planned meetings here to project a united front in their dispute with the West, banking that diplomatic and political isolation might prevent Putin from launching further incursions into eastern and southern Ukraine.

Russia has amassed thousands of troops on its border near those regions, raising anxieties in Washington, as well as in other former Soviet territories. Obama sought to reassure some of those nations that NATO would come to the defense of any member of the 28-nation alliance.

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US President Barack Obama, right, meets with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, left, at the …

"When it comes to a potential military response, that is defined by NATO membership," he said. "That's what NATO's about."

The West's preferred method for preventing an escalation of the conflict continued to be economic sanctions, both on individuals close to Putin and the Russian economy.

Obama appeared to have made progress in convincing European leaders that the costs of implementing such sanctions outweighed the risks to their own economies. Europe has deep economic ties with Russia and the continent's leaders have worried that sanctions on Moscow could boomerang and hurt their own economies.

During his news conference with Obama, Rutte said that while leaders could not completely mitigate the impact of the sanctions, "we will make sure that we will design these sanctions in such a way that they will have maximum impact on the Russian economy."

Still, it remained unclear whether the U.S. and Europe would actually go through with broader economic sanctions if Russia does escalate the crisis.

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U.S. President Barack Obama, left, shakes hands with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, right, as they …

Obama and European leaders have also been discussing ways to boost funding for Ukraine. The country's fledgling government is under significant financial strain following a shake-up that saw Ukraine's Russian-backed president flee amid popular protests.

In Washington, Senate Democrats signaled a possible retreat over the biggest sticking point blocking congressional passage of legislation clearly the way for an aid package. Up to now, the Senate and House have been at odds over a provision related to the International Monetary Fund. But legislative aides told The Associated Press that Democrats would weigh dropping language related to the IMF in the interests of securing passage of a bill.

The president also planned to discuss funding for Ukraine during meetings Wednesday with European Union leaders in Brussels, where he arrived late Tuesday.

Later Tuesday, Obama met with Prince Mohamed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, to address Arab anxieties over the Syrian civil war and U.S. nuclear talks with Iran. He also met jointly with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye, bringing together two U.S. Asian allies who have been quarreling over rekindled memories of Japan's aggression in World War II.

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Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn and Juergen Baetz contributed to this report.

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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

The president acknowledges for the first time that condemnations have had little effect on Moscow.
Warning to Putin

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea test-fired two medium-range ballistic missiles on Wednesday, South Korea and the U.S. said, a defiant challenge to a rare three-way summit of its rivals Seoul, Tokyo and Washington that focused on the North's security threat.

The launch of the Rodong missiles — for the first time since 2009 — violates U.N. Security Council resolutions and marks a big escalation from a series of shorter-range rocket launches the North has staged in recent weeks to protest ongoing annual military drills by the U.S. and South Korea that Pyongyang claims are invasion preparation.

The missiles flew about 650 kilometers (400 miles) off North Korea's east coast early Wednesday morning, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said. It wasn't immediately clear where the missiles splashed down. Kim said the missiles were likely fired from a mobile launcher.

The North's arsenal of an estimated 300 Rodong missiles could in theory be fitted with nuclear warheads — once Pyongyang masters the ability to miniaturize atomic bombs — and, with a range of up to 1,300 kilometers (800 miles), could reach Tokyo and key U.S. military bases in Japan.

The U.S. State Department later confirmed the launch of Rodong missiles and said North Korea apparently didn't issue any maritime warning.

The launch comes on the fourth anniversary of the sinking of a South Korean warship that Seoul and other nations blame on a North Korean torpedo. Pyongyang denies involvement in the attack, which killed 46 sailors.

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FILE - In this March 25, 2014 file photo, President Barack Obama meets with Japanese Prime Minister …

It also poses a big challenge to what had been recently improving relations between Pyongyang and Seoul. A year after threatening each other with war, the bitter rivals had restored some trust and held reunions of families divided by the Korean War of the early 1950s. The Korean Peninsula remains officially at war because that war ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

North Korean state media made no immediate comment on the launch.

Joel Wit, a former State Department official and editor of the 38 North website, said the launch could be a serious setback to recent efforts by North Korea to improve relations with South Korea and Japan. It also could put China, the North's only major ally, in an awkward position if and when the U.S. seeks further sanctions at the United Nations.

China has shown increasing annoyance with North Korean provocations, but Beijing also wants to avoid shaking Pyongyang and possibly jeopardizing stability along its borders.

North Korea and Japan are also to restart high-level government-to-government talks on Sunday after a 16-month hiatus. An analyst said the missile launch could be a way to test Tokyo's commitment to negotiating a deal that would provide aid to Pyongyang in return for returning any surviving Japanese abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.

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South Korean President Park Geun-hye, right, shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, l …

"If Japan goes ahead with talks despite the missile launches, that would be a strong signal to Pyongyang of Japan's commitment to the talks," said Narushige Michi****a, director of the Security and International Studies Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

During a regular briefing Wednesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called the launches "extremely problematic" but he said Tokyo would go ahead with the planned talks with Pyongyang as they are set to discuss humanitarian issues.

North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs, but most analysts don't believe Pyongyang has yet mastered the ability to build warheads small enough to mount on a missile that could threaten the United States. To achieve that goal, Pyongyang has staged several long-range rocket tests in recent years and, a year ago, its third nuclear test. Talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear program have been stalled since 2009.

The most recent launch came as U.S. President Barack Obama, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye met Tuesday in the Netherlands to discuss North Korea's security threat. It was Park and Abe's first face-to-face meeting since they both took office more than a year ago.

Last year, North Korea responded to international condemnation of its third nuclear test and the annual springtime U.S.-South Korean military drills by threatening nuclear strikes on Washington and Seoul. Analysts say the impoverished North chafes against the drills, which Washington and Seoul call routine and defensive in nature, because it has to spend precious resources responding with its own exercises.

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Follow Klug at @APKlug.

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Associated Press writers Ken Moritsugu and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.


N. Korea fires missiles as Obama hosts summit

The defiant test-fire comes as the U.S., Japan, and South Korea open a rare three-way meeting on the North's threat.
Major escalation

Washington (AFP) - Much of the classified data smuggled out last year by fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has likely been obtained by Russian intelligence officials, US lawmakers warned Tuesday.

"Ninety-five percent of the information he took, by the way, was related to military, both tactical and strategic information that we now believe is in the hands of the Russians," congressman Mike Rogers, chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, told reporters.

"A lot of that information benefits the Russians. There's also information in there we believe benefits the Chinese military as well."

Rogers cited a confidential Pentagon report that assessed the data breach by Snowden, who stunned the world when he disclosed the National Security Agency's clandestine program that scoops up the telephone metadata of most Americans.

He said the report determined that "some or all" of the information -- the Pentagon says Snowden made off with up to 1.7 million documents -- is in the hands of Russian intelligence agencies.

Snowden, wanted on espionage charges in the United States, has been given asylum in Russia.

Rogers said there was no longer a question of whether Snowden was under the influence of Russian intelligence services.

"The question is, when did that start?"

The committee's top Democrat, Charles "Dutch" Ruppersberger, agreed with the theory that Russian agents were now sifting through an extraordinary data stream thanks to Snowden.

"I can't say that I have seen Snowden give this information, but he's there. I know the Russians," Ruppersberger said.

"I'm sure the Russians have gotten all of this information."

Last October Snowden told The New York Times that he left all the documents with reporters he met in Hong Kong before flying to Moscow.

"There's a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents," he said.

SIMFEROPOL, Crimea (AP) — Within days of Crimea being swallowed up by Russia, the lights began flickering out.

Officials in the peninsula accused Ukraine of halving electricity supplies in order to bully Crimea, which voted earlier this month in a referendum to secede and join Russia.

"Cutting supplies is an attempt by Kiev to blackmail Russia through Crimea," Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov wrote on his Twitter account.

Aksyonov's combative reaction reflects a sobering reality for Crimea: the strategic peninsula's overwhelming reliance on electricity and water supplies from mainland Ukraine. The Kiev government, which has been unable to prevent the Russian annexation, still wields a weapon it can use to bargain with its aggressive neighbor.

Crimea currently gets about 80 percent of its electricity and a similar share of its water needs from Ukraine.

But Ukraine also needs to be careful not to hit Crimeans too hard over electricity and water. It cannot afford to be seen hurting ordinary people as it argues that the region remains part of its territory.

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A young couple watches at the town from a hill in Simferopol, Crimea, Tuesday, March 25, 2014. Thous …

Analysts say that Ukraine will likely be able to charge higher prices for power and water supplies to Crimea, but won't get any leverage on political and security issues.

Ukrainian authorities have described power cutoffs to Crimea this week as simply the result of technical maintenance and insist they would do nothing to harm residents. Russian officials have rushed to the rescue with hundreds of diesel generators and started drafting plans to connect the region's electrical grid to mainland Russia, which is separated from Crimea by the Kerch Strait. They said a possible water shortage could be offset by more efficient use of existing resources.

Those reassurances have provided little comfort to Filipp Savchenko, the 29-year-old owner of a refrigeration and logistics business in Simferopol, the Crimean capital. Savchenko said Tuesday that the power had been out for two nights at his warehouse, where he stores about $9,000 of produce daily for his clients.

"With the help of the generators we have, we were able to survive," Savchenko said. "But if they turn (the electricity) off in the future or for longer, we won't be able to cope. We'll lose our produce and business owners will have legal issues with us."

Regardless of the intention behind the recent blackouts, they have underscored Crimea's dependency on mainland Ukraine. They also highlight its lack of a real contingency plan if Kiev does decide to pull the plug. Russia's long-term projects could eventually snap Crimea's reliance on Ukraine for good, but that could take years.

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A woman walks her dogs on a hill in Simferopol, Crimea, Tuesday, March 25, 2014. Thousands of Ukrain …

Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said this week that a quick solution for the power problem could be to use a transmission cable to hook up the peninsula to Russia's power grid across the Kerch Strait, which is 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) wide at its narrowest point.

Russia has dispatched diesel generators, including some big units used as a back-up during the recent Sochi Winter Games. Russian Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov said Tuesday that his agency had already delivered 1,400 diesel generators to Crimea.

For the longer term, the Crimean regional government has pushed the idea of building two power plants on the peninsula. Ambitious infrastructure projects in Russia are typically blighted by major overspend and corruption.

Irrigation has long been a headache for Crimea, and could become so again, should Ukraine choose to apply pressure by closing off the Soviet-built canals fed by the Dnipro River, a major waterway that streams through the heart of the country. The canal system that feeds Crimea was built only after the peninsula was transferred in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to his native Ukraine.

Deputy Crimean premier Rustam Temirgaliyev has grimly acknowledged that the peninsula has not to date found any alternative to water supplies from the Dnipro.

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Crimean Premier Sergei Aksyonov, left, and Russian Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov ap …

But Dmitry Kirillov, the head of water resources department at Russia's Natural Resources Ministry, said that Crimea's potential water problem isn't that threatening. He argued that the agricultural sector accounts for the bulk of the region's water consumption, and a possible water shortage can be overcome simply by stopping the cultivation of some crops, such as rice, and focusing on traditional winemaking.

Adversity for the peninsula may prove an opportunity for Ukraine, which is already signaling its intent to withdraw some of the state subsidies for essential resources that have kept prices relatively low.

Sergei Sobolev, head of the parliamentary faction of the Fatherland party, whose leading members now dominate the government, has argued that special tariffs should be established for power and water supplies to Crimea.

The need to raise funds for Ukraine's cash-strapped treasury will prove particularly acute against the backdrop of reported Russian plans to increase the price of natural gas to $405 per thousand cubic meters. Late last year, Russia agreed to help prop up the teetering government of now-ousted President Viktor Yanukovych by selling Ukraine gas at $268.50 per thousand cubic meters, but it has recently announced a decision to scrap the discount.

"We have no intention of subsidizing citizens of the Russian Federation: the occupiers that have now deployed their armed contingents on temporarily occupied territory," Sobolev was cited as telling parliament this week by the UNIAN news agency.

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A man drives his car as Ukrainian tanks are transported from their base in Perevalnoe, outside Simfe …

Sobolev said that prices for gas and electricity in Crimea are priced four times below market cost and that water is provided at one-seventh of its real value.

Vladimir Omelchenko, an energy analyst at the respected Kiev-based Razumkov Center think tank, said Ukrainian companies will now charge prices that would bring a profit. He said it would be unrealistic to expect that Ukraine could win security guarantees from Moscow or persuade it to return the Ukrainian military equipment seized in Crimea.

Alexander Konovalov, the head of the Institute of Strategic Assessment and Analysis, an independent think-tank, said that Ukraine could potentially profit on its current monopoly on providing power and water supplier to Crimea. But he added that Moscow's refusal to engage in a dialogue with Ukraine's new government was hampering any meaningful dialogue.

"To start bargaining, you have to sit down for talks," Konovalov said. "And Russia has said the (Ukrainian) government is illegitimate."

Either way, many of the Crimeans who have supported the Russian annexation remain confident Russia will come to the rescue if matters get any more serious.

"We've lived through this before, I'll just go and buy some candles," said Olga Dusheyeva, an 81-year-old former math teacher. "I'm not scared, I know that Russia will always help us."

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Associated Press writer Yuras Karmanau in Kiev, Ukraine and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

The remote peninsula depends on Ukraine for roughly 80 percent of its water and electrical power.
Recent blackouts a message?

An Iranian soldier stands guard on December 2, 2003 on the border with Pakistan (AFP Photo/Behrouz Mehri)

Tehran (AFP) - Tehran on Wednesday issued a warning to Islamabad after reports emerged that one of five Iranian soldiers abducted and taken across the border into Pakistan by Sunni extremists had been executed.

President Hassan Rouhani in a telephone call with Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif demanded "serious and swift action" by Pakistan to secure the release of the soldiers.

"We expect to hear good news in this regard," he said, while calling for "joint action by both countries against terrorists," the official IRNA news agency reported.

For his part, Sharif said the issue was of "utmost importance" to his government and that he was "prepared to boost action to free the soldiers".

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had earlier expressed "grave concern" about the fate of Jamshid Danayifar, who was kidnapped along with four other border guards on February 6 by rebel group Jaish-ul Adl.

"We did all we could to secure their release," Zarif told state television after a cabinet meeting.

"But it is disappointing that the Pakistani government has failed to secure its borders, and allows terrorists to operate on its soil."

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli had earlier warned -- without elaborating -- that Iran "reserves the right to utilise all its ability in its border areas."

Jaish-ul Adl said on its website on Sunday that Danayifar had been killed, warning of further executions should Tehran refuse to "release Sunni prisoners".

The rebel group, which took up arms in 2012 to fight for what it says are the rights of Iran's minority Sunni population, is active in the restive Sistan-Baluchestan province that borders both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In November it claimed responsibility for killing a local prosecutor, a month after its rebels killed 14 Iranian border guards in an ambush.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned in a Tuesday statement the reported killing as an "appalling act" and urged that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

A spokesman for the US State Department, Alan Eyre, called for the "swift release" of the abducted soldiers while expressing hope the reported execution -- that came as Iran was celebrating its Persian New Year -- was not true.

Shortly after the abduction, Iranians launched a campaign on Twitter, despite the micro-blogging service being banned in Iran.

Demanding the soldiers' release, the FreeIranianSoldiers hashtag went viral in February.

Some Iranians have used social media to hit out at the Tehran government for its inability to bring home the young soldiers, who were serving their 24-month mandatory military service.

Border guards chief Hossein Zolfaghari has admitted that there was "negligence" in the lead-up to the kidnapping, saying those responsible were suspended, with some facing prosecution.