By Noah Browning

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Washington is keeping up efforts to put Israel-Palestinian peace negotiations back on track despite "unhelpful steps" taken by both sides in the past day, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

A surprise decision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday to sign more than a dozen international conventions that could give Palestinians greater leverage against Israel left the United States searching for a way to keep the talks alive past an April 29 deadline.

"Both sides have taken unhelpful steps over the last 24 hours. But neither party has given any indication...that they want to end the negotiations," the senior U.S. State Department official told reporters in Brusssels.

"We will spend the next few days continuing to discuss with both parties the options for the path ahead," the official said.

The Palestinians had handed over to a U.N. representative and other diplomats applications to join 15 international conventions. They include the Geneva Conventions, the key text of international law on the conduct of war and occupation.

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Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat (L) helps Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as he signs i …

A senior Palestinian official, voicing frustration deepened by Israel's failure to carry out a pledged release of several dozen Palestinian prisoners, also said on Wednesday that the eight-month-old talks had become merely "negotiating about negotiating".

Palestinian officials said Israel's failure to free the prisoners meant Abbas was no longer bound to a commitment not to confront it at the United Nations and other international bodies.

The developments further complicated efforts by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to piece together a three-way deal to push the faltering negotiations into 2015.

The talks were already in trouble over the issues of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War - and Palestinian opposition to Netanyahu's demand to recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

Israel had said it first wanted a Palestinian commitment to negotiate past the original target date for a deal before freeing the last of the 104 prisoners it promised to release as part of U.S. efforts to restart the negotiations last July.

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry walks past American (back) and Israeli flags at Ben Gurion Intern …

"UP TO THE PARTIES"

Kerry had canceled a planned visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday to meet Abbas, saying it was important to keep the peace process moving but "in the end, it is up to the parties".

Palestinians hope Abbas's move will give them a stronger basis to appeal to the International Criminal Court and eventually lodge formal complaints against Israel for its continued occupation of territory seized in 1967, lands they see as vital to an independent state. Most countries deem the Israeli settlements as illegal.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to comment on Abbas's move.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, deputy head of the PLO, cautioned on Wednesday against simply returning to an "empty routine" at the negotiating table. He reaffirmed that Palestinians wanted talks to focus on setting the future borders of their state.

"We can't return to the empty routine, a search for a framework for talks - this empty routine which is negotiating about negotiating," he told reporters.

Continuing the talks beyond the end of this month, he said, "must proceed from and depend on one main point, and this is looking into the issue of borders."

The conventions signed by Abbas were mostly sets of international standards on social and rights issues, such as a conventions against discrimination against women and for the rights of disabled people as well as the Geneva Conventions.

Law professor Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, described Abbas's signature on the conventions as "merely symbolic". He noted Abbas had stopped short of applying for membership in international organisations.

Kerry made an unscheduled visit to Jerusalem on Monday seeking to extend the negotiations by putting together a proposal that included the possible release of Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy jailed in the United States in the 1980s.

The package, officials close to the talks said, included an additional Israeli release of hundreds of jailed Palestinians and a possible partial freeze on the settlements.

Pollard, a U.S. citizen and former navy analyst, is serving a life term for spying for Israel. His freedom would be a political triumph for Netanyahu, making it easier for him to sell a wider release of jailed Palestinians to cabinet members and a sceptical Israeli public.

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Lesley Wroughton in Brussels and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Angus MacSwan)

The Palestinian president signed a dozen treaties giving Palestinians greater leverage against Israel.
Kerry's plea

Even as all sides called for dialogue, Russia and the West seemed farther apart. NATO foreign ministers voted to increase cooperation with Ukraine and suspend it with Russia.

Even as Russia issued a warning to Ukraine Tuesday not to move closer to NATO, foreign ministers of the 28 North Atlantic Alliance member countries voted to increase cooperation with the struggling former Soviet republic.

At the same time, the NATO ministers moved to bolster Alliance forces in Eastern Europe – and to suspend all military and civilian cooperation with Russia.

The moves suggest a deepening estrangement between Russia and the West, even as leaders on all sides continue to call for dialogue and a diplomatic solution to the Russia-Ukraine standoff.

NATO ministers meeting in Brussels Tuesday ordered up plans for beefing up defenses and the Alliance presence in member countries closest to Russia – such as the Baltic states and Poland – that have expressed growing unease over Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

At the same time, they approved a suspension of cooperation with Russia that will affect hundreds of programs, from counterterrorism efforts to civilian air security programs.

After Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea province last month it could no longer be “business as usual” with Russia, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters after the ministers’ meeting.

NATO will also boost its cooperation with Ukraine’s armed forces by increasing joint training programs and Ukrainian participation in NATO exercises.

Earlier Tuesday Russia left no doubt about its view of closer Ukraine-NATO ties, issuing a statement that largely blamed past Ukrainian flirtations with NATO for the crisis shaking Europe’s post-cold-war order.

A debate in Ukraine over the past year on whether the former Soviet republic should move closer to and even seek to join NATO “led to freezing of Russian-Ukrainian political communications [and] to headaches in the relationship between NATO and Russia,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“What is most dangerous,” the statement continued, is how discussion of Ukraine’s NATO aspirations led to “the deepening of the split of Ukrainian society, the majority of which doesn’t support the idea of Ukraine entering NATO.”

Ukraine’s interim government says it is not seeking Alliance membership.

Russia has justified its annexation of Crimea last month in part on the grounds that it was defending the aspirations of the majority ethnic Russians in the province. The ethnic Russians oppose the Western tilt of the forces in power in Kiev since the ouster of the pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovitch.

That reasoning for Russia’s actions has also set NATO on edge as Russia has amassed tens of thousands of forces along its border with Ukraine. Like Crimea, Ukraine’s eastern provinces are largely populated by ethnic Russians.

NATO and Western European leaders continued to express concerns Tuesday that Russia could decide to send its troops into eastern Ukraine to seize the country’s eastern-most provinces.

Mr. Rasmussen rejected Russian claims of a partial drawback from the border, telling reporters, “This is not what we are seeing.” German officials had reported Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin assured German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a telephone conversation that a partial pullback was under way.

What worries NATO officials is that the thousands of troops Russia has deployed to the border appear to be settling in for the long haul.

That could suggest a couple of things, regional analysts say: One is that Russia intends to keep up its campaign of “intimidation,” as President Obama called it last week, to try to dissuade Kiev from continuing on its Westward-leading path.

Another is that Moscow still hasn’t decided if it will order its troops into eastern Ukraine, but wants to keep its options open.

Russia could achieve Ukraine incursion in 3-5 days

By Adrian Croft

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russia has massed all the forces it needs on Ukraine's border if it were to decide to carry out an "incursion" into the country, and it could achieve its objective in three to five days, NATO's top military commander said on Wednesday.

Calling the situation "incredibly concerning", NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, said NATO had spotted signs of movement by a very small part of the Russian force overnight but had no indication that this was part of a withdrawal to barracks.

Russia's seizure and annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region has caused the deepest crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War, leading the United States and Europe to impose sanctions on Moscow. They have said they will strengthen these if Russia moves beyond Crimea into eastern Ukraine.

NATO military chiefs are concerned that the Russian force on the Ukrainian border, which they estimate stands at 40,000 soldiers, could pose a threat to eastern and southern Ukraine.

"This is a very large and very capable and very ready force," Breedlove said in an interview with Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.

The Russian force has aircraft and helicopter support as well as field hospitals and electronic warfare capabilities - "the entire suite that would be required to successfully have an incursion into Ukraine, should the decision be made," Breedlove said.

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Members of the Ukrainian far-right radical group Right Sector stand outside the parliament in Kiev M …

"We think it is ready to go and we think it could accomplish its objectives in between three and five days if directed to make the actions."

Russia has said it has no intention of invading its neighbor, although since the toppling of Moscow-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich in February it has asserted a right to intervene to protect ethnic Russians if necessary.

Further Russian intervention in Ukraine would be an "historic mistake" that would deepen Moscow's international isolation, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Wednesday.

POSSIBLE AIMS

Breedlove said Russia could have several potential objectives. These included: an incursion into southern Ukraine to establish a land corridor to Crimea; pushing beyond Crimea to Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odessa; or even threatening to connect to Transdniestria, the mainly Russian-speaking, separatist region of Moldova that lies to the west of Ukraine.

Russia also has forces to the north and northeast of Ukraine that could enter the east of the former Soviet republic if Moscow ordered them to do so, Breedlove said.

NATO Allies Pledge To Beef Up Eastern DefensesPlay video

He said NATO planned no military response to events in Ukraine, which is not a member of the alliance: "We really need to resolve this in a peaceful manner because a military conflict would be very costly to Europe and to the nations involved."

But events in Ukraine, particularly Russia's use of a snap exercise to ready a military force to intervene in Crimea, are already leading to a deep rethink of strategy by NATO, a military alliance of 28 nations that has been the core of European defense for more than 60 years.

"We are going to have to look at how our alliance now is prepared for a different paradigm, a different rule set... We will need to rethink our force posture, our force positioning, our force provisioning, readiness, etc," Breedlove said.

NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels this week suspended all practical cooperation with Russia in protest at its actions in Crimea and asked military commanders to draw up plans to reinforce NATO members in eastern Europe that are fearful of a threat from Russia.

Breedlove said the ministers had asked him to draft by April 15 a package of measures that would include reinforcements by land, air and sea. He said he would offer a range of options and recommend a plan.

"We will work on air, land and sea 'reassurances' and we will look to position those 'reassurances' across the breadth of our exposure: north, centre, and south," he said.

Yanukovych: Crimea A Part Of UkrainePlay video

The United States deployed a warship to the Black Sea last month for exercises with allies. It also increased the number of U.S. aircraft in regular NATO air patrols over the Baltics and beefed up a previously planned training exercise with the Polish air force.

A number of other NATO allies have also offered extra planes and ships to reinforce eastern European countries.

MORE EXERCISES

Breedlove said the initial U.S. moves with "aircraft in the north, aircraft in the centre and a ship in the south" could serve as a model for what NATO would do next, except other NATO allies would also be involved in future reinforcements.

He would not say how long the reinforcements would stay in central and eastern Europe but said it would not be short-term, although deployments would be periodically reviewed.

NATO may bring forward some military exercises or expand others, he said.

NATO is also looking at the readiness of its rapid reaction force, the NATO Response Force, which includes land, air, sea and special operations forces, and could consider shortening the time it takes for the force to respond, he said.

Plans for NATO and Russia to cooperate in providing a naval escort for a U.S. ship that will destroy Syria's deadliest chemical weapons were scrapped due to the Crimea crisis.

But Breedlove said NATO members had made plenty of offers of ships to escort the U.S. cargo ship Cape Ray and he hoped this task would become an alliance mission.

The Ukraine crisis has reopened debate within NATO about whether its members need to spend more on defense.

Many of them have cut military budgets in response to the financial crisis, with only a handful reaching NATO's target of spending 2 percent of economic output on defense.

Breedlove said countries needed to get to 2 percent, but this was not a 'magic' figure; the point was to spend it "to create the kind of requirements and capabilities that we need as a NATO team".

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

The alliance commander says Moscow has amassed enough troops near the border to pose a threat to Kiev.
'Very ready force'

Citing Russia’s ongoing violations of Ukraine’s sovereign and territorial integrity, NASA told its officials today that the agency is suspending all contact with Russian government representatives. In an internal NASA memorandum obtained by The Verge, the agency said that the suspension includes travel to Russia, teleconferences, and visits by Russian government officials to NASA facilities. NASA is even suspending the exchange of emails with Russian officials.

Ongoing International Space Station activities are exempt from this suspension, however, as are meetings with other countries held outside of Russia that include the participation of Russian officials. The directives come directly from Michael O'Brien, the agency associate administrator for International and Interagency Relations.

"NASA's goals aren't political," said a NASA scientist who spoke to The Verge on condition of anonymity. "This is one of the first major actions I have heard of from the US government and it is to stop science and technology collaboration... You're telling me there is nothing better?"

Earlier in March, NASA's chief executive, Charles Bolden, told reporters that "everything is normal in our relationship with Russia." But that relationship seems to have gone sour since then. Last week, Bolden used mounting tensions with Russia to blast Congress on its lack of space funding in a blog post, stating that the US' current reliance on Russian space missions was unacceptable.

Here is an excerpt of the memo:

Given Russia's ongoing violation of Ukraine¹s sovereignty and territorial integrity, until further notice, the U.S. Government has determined that all NASA contacts with Russian Government representatives are suspended, unless the activity has been specifically excepted. This suspension includes NASA travel to Russia and visits by Russian Government representatives to NASA facilities, bilateral meetings, email, and teleconferences or videoconferences. At the present time, only operational International Space Station activities have been excepted. In addition, multilateral meetings held outside of Russia that may include Russian participation are not precluded under the present guidance.

NASA says it will issue a public statement today. We will update when it's released.

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) — Fort Hood said Wednesday that a shooting happened at the Texas Army base and that injuries have been reported.

The base confirmed the shooting in a brief statement posted online Wednesday. The statement also said emergency crews were on the scene and that further details were not yet known.

The Bell's County Sheriff's Office dispatched deputies and troopers from the Texas Department of Public Safety to the nearby post after receiving reports of an "active shooter," sheriff's Lt. Donnie Adams said. FBI spokeswoman Michelle Lee said its agents were also headed to the scene.

The base was the scene of a mass shooting in 2009. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 wounded in what was the deadliest attack on a domestic military installation in history.

On its Twitter feed and Facebook page, Fort Hood on Wednesday ordered everyone on base to "shelter in place." The 1st Cavalry Division, which is based at Fort Hood, sent a Twitter alert telling people on base to close doors and stay away from windows.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president has been informed of the reports of a shooting at Fort Hood and will continue to receive updates as he attends a pair of Democratic Party fundraisers in Chicago.

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Map locates Fort Hood, Texas; 1c x 3 inches; 46.5 mm x 76 mm;

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also has been informed of the shooting, said Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby.

Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan was convicted and sentenced to death last year in the Nov. 5, 2009, attack on his fellow soldiers as they waited inside a crowded building at Fort Hood. Soldiers there were waiting to get vaccines and routine paperwork after recently returning from deployments or while preparing to go to Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to testimony during Hasan's trial last August, Hasan walked inside carrying two weapons and several loaded magazines, shouted "Allahu Akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" — and opened fire with a handgun.

Witnesses said he targeted soldiers as he walked through the building, leaving pools of blood, spent casings and dying soldiers on the floor. Photos of the scene were shown to the 13 officers on the military jury.

The rampage ended when Hasan was shot in the back by Fort Hood police officers outside the building, which left him paralyzed from the waist down. Hasan is now on death row at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

After that shooting, the military tightened security at bases nationwide. Those measures included issuing security personnel long-barreled weapons, adding an insider-attack scenario to their training, and strengthening ties to local law enforcement, according to Peter Daly, a vice admiral who retired from the Navy in 2011. The military also joined an FBI intelligence-sharing program aimed at identifying terror threats.

In September, a former Navy man opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard, leaving at least 13 people dead, including the gunman. After that shooting, Hagel ordered the Pentagon to review security at all U.S. defense installations worldwide and examine the granting of security clearances that allow access to them.

Shooting at Fort Hood military base

Everyone at the Texas Army station has been ordered to close doors and stay away from windows.