Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

The severity of future European Union sanctions could depend on the Netherlands, which suffered the greatest loss of life when the Malaysia Airlines flight was brought down.

U.S. President Barack Obama has piled pressure on Europe for a more forceful response, and the three leading EU powers - Britain, France and Germany - said they should be ready to ratchet up sanctions.

But demonstrating the difficulty of getting agreement from 28 member states, London clashed with Paris over France's decision to press ahead with the sale of warships to Russia.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday such an order had become "unthinkable".

"We need to put the pressure on with all our partners to say that we cannot go on doing business as usual with a country when it is behaving in this way," Cameron said.

He also said the European Union should consider hard-hitting economic sanctions and that Russia could not expect access to European markets, capital and technical expertise.

Diplomats said Tuesday's meeting in Brussels was still not expected to go much further than agreeing on the people and possibly companies to be hit with asset freezes under a more aggressive framework agreed last week. Previously, they had only said they would decide on the list by the end of July.