Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop said Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin responded positively to her government's request to be allowed access to the MH17 crash site in eastern Ukraine.
The Australian Foreign Minister met Putin on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe Meeting in Milan. This high-level discussion between Australia and Russia comes just days after the Australian prime minister warned that he would shirt-front Putin over the shooting down of the plane at the G20 meet in November.
"I had a very detailed discussion with him," Bishop told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation of their 25-minute talk in Milan. "I expressed our concerns about the Malaysia Airlines crash, MH17, in which a number of Australians were killed, and I implored him to use Russia's influence over the separatists in eastern Ukraine to enable our investigators to have access to the crash site."
"He said that he would seek to respond to my request by asking the separatists to provide that access," Bishop said, The Straits Times reports.
Elaborating further, Bishop said that there was an urgency to the investigation as the winter was about to set in.
She said that the Dutch, Malaysian and Australian authorities think that one more visit to the crash site was needed to search for the remains.
"However, it was not safe for the representatives to visit the area due to the danger from the pro-Russian rebels, though a ceasefire was in place," Bishop said, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.
Turning to the issue of the Abbott government's decision not to send health workers to West Africa to help with the Ebola crisis, Bishop said that Australia did not have capability to evacuate an Ebola patient. Noting that the 30-hour flight time was "clinically impossible," Bishop said that no other country had offered to take care of an Australia health worker if he/she got infected with the virus.
Bishop said that Australia had provided substantial funding to the World Health Organization in the fight against the Ebola outbreak.
