KIEV, Aug. 4 - President Petro Poroshenko convened his generals Tuesday to discuss the latest failed bid to negotiate an end to clashes with pro-Russian rebels and the seven troops killed in another recent wave of attacks, AFP reported.

Poroshenko has found himself trapped between more militant Ukrainian nationalists and Western leaders who hope to see an end to 16 months of fighting in the European Union's backyard.

The pro-EU leader sent his personal envoy to the Belarussian capital Minsk on Monday to discuss a new weapons withdrawal agreement with rebel and Moscow negotiators.

But the European-mediated talks fell apart after more than six hours due to what one separatist said was Kiev's refusal to pull back its forces from four strategic sites.

"We need to clearly determine a plan for strengthening our defenses in case of the conflict's escalation," the presidency quoted Poroshenko as telling members of Ukraine's powerful National Security and Defense Council and top ministers.

Council Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov reported the death of three more soldiers in overnight rocket attacks.
Kiev said four of its troops had been killed on Monday and the rebels reported one loss in the past two days.
The Ukrainian government and its Western allies fear that the war -- which has already killed nearly 7,000 people -- may turn into a "frozen conflict" in which low-level violence becomes a constant menace that leaves much of eastern Europe on a permanent state of alert.

Turchynov blamed the latest clashes on Russian soldiers whom the Kremlin has repeatedly denied sending into its southwestern neighbor's industrial heartland.

"Russia's demonstratively provocative conduct is undermining all attempts at a peaceful solution," Turchynov said in a statement.

A daily report released by monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) mentioned the "claimed" presence of Russian paratroopers at a rebel weapons storage site.

"An armed man guarding the facility at one of the sites claimed that he and those present at the site were part of the 16th airborne brigade from Orenburg, Russian Federation," the OSCE report said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov vowed to look into the findings but expressed doubts about their validity.

Moscow's state-run Sputnik news agency later released an English-language report stating that "there is no 16th airborne brigade in the Russian armed forces, and no Russian airborne brigades are stationed in Russia's Orenburg region."

An OSCE spokesman said he could add no further details to what the purported Russian soldiers had told his team.

The Kremlin has always insisted that any Russians captured or seen in the war zone were either off-duty soldiers or volunteers who had no special instructions to fight from the army. (afp/ez)