Kiev: It was a tough choice between the head and the heart. In the end, the Dutch went with their hearts.
A week since MH17 fell from the sky over Ukraine, the Dutch team investigating the crash has made its first decision: between the forensic integrity of the crash site, and the need to bring home the bodies of the dead.
They chose the victims.
On Thursday the Dutch Safety Board – on its first day officially in charge of the investigation - gave permission for local workers on the site to move wreckage in order to salvage the bodies that still remain at the site.
“The Dutch Safety Board considers it of the utmost importance that as many victims as possible can be returned to the Netherlands so that they can be identified and returned to their next of kin,” the DSB said in a statement justifying the move.
The Dutch-led team, assisted by experts from Australia and several other countries, was made the official leader of the investigation in a ceremony on Thursday at Kiev’s imposing presidential palace (after a false start at the foreign ministry on the other side of town, possibly because the Ukraine government was going through a political crisis on the same day).
The documents were signed by the Netherlands foreign minister Frans Timmermans and Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko.
The ceremony was witnessed by Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop, during a 90-minute meeting at the palace.
After a day of criss-crossing Kiev with Mr Timmermans in a convoy of diplomatic cars behind a siren-wailing police car, Ms Bishop said Australia was now “days, not weeks” away from getting experts onto the crash site in significant numbers.
She believed the transfer of responsibility was the key, because the separatists in control of the site and surrounding regions would be much more willing to deal with the Dutch.
“Now that Ukraine has transferred legal responsibility to the Netherlands we feel we will get more progress with the separatists,” Ms Bishop said.
However she had not yet been able to secure access to the site, instead leaving negotiations with the separatists to a team of independent observers.
“Wherever we went today (in Kiev)… everyone had the same goal, and that is to be able to give assurance to the families in the countries affected that we are in the process of bringing their loved ones home,” Ms Bishop said.
She was confident that work could start on the site “without much further delay”.
However she did not say whether Australia would bring in the 50 AFP officers it has on standby in London to secure the site.
Ms Bishop met with international observers Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, to take advice on how best to secure the site and get more experts through the surrounding civil war zone.
She will rely on their negotiators to smooth the way, she said.
“This site is in territory that is held by the Russian-backed separatists who have weapons, are heavily armed with very sophisticated equipment,” she said.
Each country has had to negotiate a time and a place for each person accessing the site, and the local militia had restricted them to only three on Thursday.
“We are taking (OSCE’s) specific advice and working very closely with them… to ensure we get the co-operation of the separatists,” she said.
“As part of the negotiations with the separatists we will see what the result is.
“I feel confident that over the next few days we will see significant progress.”
Practical issues of security at the site would be worked through by Australian officials over the coming days, Ms Bishop said.
“We will protect our people,” she said. “We will not put them in unnecessary danger but we have to achieve the goal of securing the site so a proper air crash investigation can take place.
“From now on the Netherlands is in charge of an investigation on that site.”
On Friday, Ukraine time, Ms Bishop and Mr Timmermans will travel on to Kharkiv, to meet forensic team putting the bodies so far recovered from the crash on planes back to the Netherlands.
Both will then fly back to Amsterdam.
