Ukraine protesters take back square despite 'truce'

KIEV: Ukrainian protesters hurling petrol bombs and paving stones drove riot police from the central square in Kiev on Thursday despite a "truce" which embattled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich said he had agreed with opposition leaders.

Afterward, a Reuters photographer saw 10 dead in civilian clothing in two places on Independence Square, known as Maidan, where pro-European demonstrators have been encamped for three months. Television also showed activists in combat fatigues leading away several uniformed policemen they had captured.

The crowd had surged forward to recapture a corner of the square, closest to the presidency and parliament, which riot police had occupied late on Tuesday. Since then, 28 people, including 10 policemen, have been killed in the worst violence since Ukraine became independent of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Both sides have accused the other of using live ammunition.

The flare-up, just as three European foreign ministers arrived in Kiev for talks with Yanukovich to try to promote a political compromise, broke a tense stand-off in the city center, now alive with wailing police and ambulance sirens.

Parliament was evacuated, local media said, and it was unclear how the violence would affect the plans of the EU delegation of ministers from Germany, France and Poland.

The crisis in the sprawling country of 46 million with an ailing economy and endemic corruption has mounted since Yanukovich pulled out of a planned far-reaching trade agreement with the EU in November under fierce pressure from Moscow and agreed to take a $15-billion Russian bailout instead.

The United States stepped up pressure on Wednesday by imposing travel bans on 20 senior Ukrainian officials, and European Union foreign ministers are due to meet in Brussels later on Thursday to consider similar measures.

A statement on Yanukovich's website announced an accord late on Wednesday with opposition leaders for "the start to negotiations with the aim of ending bloodshed, and stabilizing the situation in the state in the interest of social peace".

Responding cautiously, US President Barack Obama deemed the truce a "welcome step forward", but said the White House would continue to monitor the situation closely to "ensure that actions mirror words".

"Our approach in the United States is not to see these as some Cold War chessboard in which we're in competition with Russia," Obama said after a North American summit in Mexico.

"Our goal is to make sure that the people of Ukraine are able to make decisions for themselves for the future, that the people of Syria are able to make decisions without having bombs going off and killing women and children," he said.