No lethal weapons to Ukraine at this stage: Britain

Britain is not supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine "at this stage", but will send its service personnel to advise the Ukrainians, British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament Tuesday.

"We are not at the stage of supplying lethal equipment. We have announced our series of non-lethal equipment (supply)... which we have already said we will give to Ukraine," Cameron said, according to a Xinhua report.

"Over the course of the next months, we are going to deploy British service personnel to advise (in) a wide range of training (programmes), from technical, intelligence, logistics, to medical care," he elaborated.

Cameron reiterated the need for a diplomatic solution, rather than a military one, to the Ukraine issue.

"I think the reason for not going further is we don't believe fundamentally (that) there is some military solution to this issue. There needs to be a diplomatic solution, which I think should be enabled by sanctions and pressure," he explained.

"But obviously where we can help our friends (with) non-lethal equipment, we should," he told the British parliament.

The pro-independence insurgents in eastern Ukraine Tuesday said they have begun a "full-scale" pullout of heavy weapons from the front line of their fight with government troops.

The pullback of heavy weapons is believed to be a part of the ceasefire deal agreed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande Feb 12 after marathon talks in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

The deal, aimed at ending the 12-month-old conflict that has killed over 5,700 people, included a ceasefire from Feb 15, clear time lines for elections in eastern Ukraine, border control and prisoner exchange.