REPORT: Ukraine security council says arms arrive in eastern region from Russia

Reiterating Kiev's position that a ceasefire would be agreed if the rebels put down their weapons, handed over control of the border and allowed international monitors to assess the situation, Andriy Lysenko told a news conference: "We have no information on the black boxes. Not one of them has been handed over to the Ukrainian side."

Meanwhile, workers from Ukraine's Emergencies Ministry have explored 18 square km of a total 25 square km of the site where a Malaysian airliner crashed and have found 186 bodies, its spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, said.

"At 7 a.m. on July 19, 186 bodies have been found. The area that needs to be checked stands at 25 square km. Eighteen square km have already been checked," he told a news conference.

"The fighters have allowed Emergencies Ministry workers in there, but they do not allow them to take anything from the area. The fighters are taking away all that has been found."

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said he believed Russia was doing its best to ensure a safe route to the site of the downed Flight MH17 and appealed to the world to help ensure bodies can be retrieved quickly.

Liow, who is flying to Ukraine later in the day, also said he believed the plane had been shot down.

While stopping short of blaming Russia for Thursday's crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, in which 298 people died, US President Barack Obama accused Moscow of failing to stop the violence that made it possible to shoot down the plane.

The United States has said the jetliner was hit by a surface-to-air missile fired from rebel territory.

Liow again defended the plane's route said and said it never strayed into restricted air space. "It flew at an altitude set and deemed safe by local air traffic control and never strayed to restricted air space," he said.

Malaysia Airlines director of operations Izham Ismail said all airlines mad their own threat analysis."I believe we did not make a mistake," he said.

International observers said gunmen stopped them examining the site properly when they got there on Friday. More than half of the victims were Dutch in what has become a pivotal incident in deteriorating relations between Russia and the West.

US President Barack Obama said the downing of a Malaysian jetliner in a Ukrainian region controlled by Russian-backed separatists should be a "wake-up call for Europe and the world" in a crisis that appears to be at a turning point and warned Russia of possible tightening of sanctions.

There were no survivors from Flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, a Boeing 777. The United Nations said 80 of the 298 aboard were children. The deadliest attack on a commercial airliner, it scattered bodies over miles of rebel-held territory near the border with Russia.

The loss was the second devastating blow for Malaysia Airlines and the country this year, following the disappearance of Flight MH370 in March with 239 passengers and crew on board on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Local reactions:

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko urged the United Nations on Saturday to label rebels fighting Ukrainian forces in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk as belonging to "terrorist organisations".      

During a telephone conversation with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Poroshenko's press service quoted the leader as saying: "The president of Ukraine urged the U.N. to condemn the actions of terrorists and to recognise the so-called "DNR" (Donetsk People's Republic) and "LNR" (Luhansk People's Republic) as terrorist organisations." 

Earlier, Poroshenko told his Polish counterpart that those connected to the downing of a Malaysian airliner in eastern Ukraine should not be involved in talks on resolving the conflict there.       

In a statement on the presidential website, Poroshenko was quoted as telling Bronislaw Komorowsky: "Those who are connected to the terrorist attack cannot be party to the negotiations. Their crime should be investigated in international courts."      

"Moreover, the president said, virtually all of them are Russian citizens and cannot have a conversation about the future of Ukraine," the statement said.

For his part, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk told a German newspaper that it takes professionals to shoot down an airliner and not a group of "drunken gorillas", claiming that Russia was behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines MH-17.     

"Very professional staff is needed to find targets and fire this missile," he said in an interview to be published on Sunday in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung."It is possible that these people came from Russia."

Int'l reactions:

Russia called on Ukraine's authorities and rebels on Saturday to give international experts access to the crash site of a Malaysian airliner, the foreign ministry said.      

"The Russian side appeals to both sides of the Ukrainian conflict, urging them to do everything possible to enable access for international experts to the airplane crash area in order to take action necessary for the investigation," it said in a statement.

This comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed on the need to urgently stop hostilities in Ukraine's southeast and begin peace talks, the Kremlin said in a statement.    

The two leaders also stressed the importance of a thorough and objective investigation of all the circumstances of the downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane.       

"It was noted that it is of fundamental importance to resume consultations within the contact group with representatives of the protest regions as well as the implementation of the Russian initiative for the presence of the OSCE observers at two checkpoints on the Russian-Ukrainian border," the Kremlin said.

German Chancellor Merkel also called on Russian President Putin to use his influence over pro-Russian separatists to reach a ceasefire in Ukraine, the German government said in a statement.