U.S. President Barack Obama had phone talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom David Cameron and of Australia Tony Abbot to discuss the situation around the downing of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane in the east of Ukraine on July 17, the White House reported.

Deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes said that the calls to the three leaders all "covered the disaster that befell flight MH 17," which was en route from Amsterdam (the Netherlands) to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia).

"The two leaders discussed the importance of a prompt, full, unimpeded and transparent international investigation, and they stressed the need for immediate access by international investigators to the crash site," the White House said in a statement.

Obama earlier announced that the apparent shoot-down of the plane was a "wake-up call" for Europe.

" I think that this certainly will be a wake-up call for Europe and the world that there are consequences to an escalating conflict in eastern Ukraine, that it is not going to be localized, it is not going to be contained," Obama said in a statement on Friday.

The EU summit that took place on July 16 couldn't come to a joint decision to toughen sanctions against Russia. Some analysts claim that the United States is attempting to use the Boeing 777 crash to make the EU decide on further sanctions vis-à-vis Russia.

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