NATO to Deploy Recon Flights over Poland, Romania as Russia Says to Suggest Ukraine Solutions

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke late Sunday with Chinese President Xi Jinping about ways to peacefully resolve a tense crisis over control of Ukraine's Crimea region, the White House said.

"They affirmed their shared interest in reducing tensions and identifying a peaceful resolution to the dispute between Russia and Ukraine," the White House said in a statement released on Monday.

"The two leaders agreed on the importance of upholding principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, both in the context of Ukraine and also for the broader functioning of the international system," the White House said.

"The president noted his overriding objective of restoring Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity and ensuring the Ukrainian people are able to determine their own future without foreign interference."

Obama and Xi's discussion of the Crimea standoff came just days ahead of a planned meeting in Washington Wednesday between the U.S. leader and Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

The escalating standoff, the most explosive East-West crisis since the Cold War, led Obama to announce travel bans and an asset freeze on Russia officials held responsible for endangering the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Later on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Serge Lavrov said Moscow will make a series of counter-proposals to resolve the crisis in Ukraine, in response to a document sent by Washington.

"We prepared, together with members of the Russian Security Council, our counter-proposals. They aim to resolve the situation on the basis of international law and take into account the interests of all Ukrainians without exception," he said in a televised meeting with Putin.

Pro-Russian troops have seized control of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and the government there has declared its intention to join Russia, a decision it wants to put to a referendum on March 16.

Lavrov said he had invited U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to come to Russia for a meeting on Monday to discuss the crisis in Ukraine.

"We suggested that he come today, I think, and we were prepared to receive him. He gave his preliminary consent. He then called me on Saturday and said he would like to postpone it for a while," Lavrov said.

Kerry's reason for the postponement was that policymakers were in the middle of preparing their document, Lavrov said, according to the ITAR-TASS news agency.

The Washington paper, which Moscow received on Friday, details "a concept which does not quite agree with us because everything was stated in terms of allegedly having a conflict between Russia and Ukraine and in terms of accepting the fait accompli," Lavrov told Putin.

"Our partners suggested proceeding from this situation created by the coup," he added.

He gave no further details on the content of Washington's proposals.

Meanwhile, NATO said Monday it will deploy AWACS reconnaissance aircraft to overfly Poland and Romania as part of alliance efforts to monitor the crisis in Ukraine.

The flights "will enhance the Alliance's situational awareness," a NATO official said, adding: "All AWACS reconnaissance flights will take place solely over Alliance territory."

"This decision is an appropriate and responsible action in line with NATO's decision to intensify our ongoing assessment of the implications of this crisis for Alliance security," the official said.

The NATO announcement comes as Washington and Moscow traded barbs over rival proposals to ease the crisis, with each challenging the other to show they were really interested in a peaceful outcome.

The AWACS -- Airborne Warning and Control System -- will fly missions from their home base in Geilenkirchen, Germany, where 17 are housed, and from Waddington in Britain.

The AWACS aircraft are one of the most sophisticated command and control vehicles in the NATO armory, capable of monitoring huge swathes of airspace.

Diplomatic sources said the AWACS were routinely deployed and on that count, there was nothing unusual in their use in this case.

However, it was unusual for their deployment to be announced publicly in this way, they said.

Flying over Poland and Romania, the AWACS planes, with their distinctive rotating radar dome mounted above the fuselage, should be able to see far into Ukraine airspace.

As the Ukraine crisis has deepened with Russian intervention in the Crimea, former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe have become increasingly nervous at President Putin's apparent willingness to up the ante.

The situation risks becoming more difficult if Crimea, now controlled by pro-Russian leaders, votes in a March 16 referendum to break all links with Kiev and become part of Russia.

Poland and the Baltic states especially have taken a hard line as events have unfolded and last week, Warsaw called for urgent consultations with its NATO allies on the situation.

In response to Putin's move into Crimea, home to a large Russian-speaking population and the Black Sea fleet, the U.S. is sending a dozen F-16 fighter jets and 300 service personnel to Poland as part of a training exercise.

Last week, Washington also sent six additional F-15 fighter jets to step up NATO air patrols over the Baltic states.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said at the time of last week's deployment that it was a sign that "NATO is responding promptly and fast."

Since January, four U.S. F-15 fighter jets have been assigned for air patrols over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.