Ukraine's Crimean peninsula declared itself independent after residents voted by 96.8 per cent on Sunday to secede and join the Russian Federation.

Valery Ryazantsev, the head of Russia's observer mission in Crimea and a member of the Russian parliament's upper house, said that the results were beyond dispute.

He told the Interfax news agency that there were "absolutely no reasons to consider the vote results illegitimate."

The Crimean parliament declared that all Ukrainian state property on the peninsula would be nationalised to become the property of the Crimean Republic.

Crimean deputies asked the United Nations and other countries to recognise their new status.

They also began work on setting up a central bank with support from Russia.

Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Temirgaliyev said that the new bank would later function as a regional branch of the Russian central bank.

Russia will send Crimea 1 billion roubles (£20 million) "in the coming days" to
help it stabilise its financial situation, Mr Temirgaliyev added.

A separate decree named the Russian rouble as an official currency, although Crimea will also continue using the Ukrainian hryvnia until 2015.

Crimean delegates will now fly to Moscow to discuss annexation by Russia.

However, Russia's Foreign Ministry urged Ukraine's parliament to call a constitutional assembly that could draft a new constitution to make the country federal, handing more power to its regions, and to pave the way for fresh elections.

That might resolve the polarisation between Ukraine's western regions, which favour closer ties with the European Union, and its more industrialised eastern areas that have major trading links with Russia.

Moscow suggested that Ukrainian regions should get broader autonomy and that the country should adopt a "neutral political and military status."

Ukraine's coup-installed Prime Minister Andriy Deshchytsya dismissed any thoughts of constitutional change, saying that Moscow's proposal looked "like an ultimatum."

He paid a visit to Nato headquarters in Brussels to request technical equipment to deal with the secession of Crimea and what he called Russia's incursion there.

He also spoke to Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen about sending monitors to Ukraine, which would certainly provoke anger in Russia.