Roundup: British PM says no lethal weapons to arm Ukraine "at this stage," stresses diplomatic solution

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Tuesday Britain was not supplying lethal equipment to Ukraine "at this stage," but stressed the need for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

"We are not at this stage of supplying lethal equipment. We have announced our series of non-lethal equipment ... which we have already said we will give to Ukraine," Cameron told the Parliament's Liaison Committee on Tuesday.

"Over the course of the next months, we are going to be deploying British service personnel to advise a wide range of training, from technical, intelligence, logistics, to medical care which is something else they have asked for," he elaborated.

He stressed the importance of using "economic power" to step up pressure against Russia in tackling the Ukraine crisis.

"I am not saying we should send a huge number of British troops to Ukraine, or even at the stage of arming the Ukrainians. But what we should do is to make the weight of our economic power -- Europe and America -- play against Russia, if it continues to behave this way," he said.

Meanwhile, the prime minister said Britain did not give up the possibility of "going further."

"I don't say we should rule out forever going further. I think America is thinking carefully about this ... we have very clear decisions that we should be in the space of providing the non-lethal support, the help and the advice," he noted.

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 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 and economic ways of Europe and America," he explained.

"But obviously where we can help our friends in non-lethal equipment, we should," he told British lawmakers.

Threatening with new sanctions, the prime minister said: " I think what we should be putting into place is a sense that, if there is another Debaltseve, then that will trigger a round of sanctions that will be materially different to what we have seen so far."

"I do think, if you look at the fact of sanctions on Russian banks, on big Russian companies, on the economy, it is having an effect," he added.

He said the sanctions were "beginning to change some of the advice and thinking that Putin will be getting, because a lot of business people can see that this is a dead-end."

A peace deal was reached after negotiations between leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France in Minsk on Feb. 12 in a bid to end the year-long conflicts in the East European country which have claimed thousands of lives.

The foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday renewed calls to implement the Minsk peace accord and reinforce the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring mission in Ukraine. Endit