Iran is under pressure to transfer the black box of the Ukrainian plane
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Roshan Amiri
- . February 18, 2020
- . Update: February 18, 2020 2:41 pm
Canada and other countries whose citizens died during an Iranian missile attack on a Ukrainian International Airlines plane flying from Tehran airport have tightened their requirements for Iran to transfer a black box from Ukrainian International Airlines to a third party for examination.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Jawad Zarif proposed sending special equipment to Tehran to help Iranians decipher the contents of the black box, and made a commitment to open the box only in the presence of all interested parties. But it will be very difficult to do this, as Western experts said that the equipment needed for this equipment is very cumbersome and cannot be delivered to Tehran.
The victims of the accident on January 8 were 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Germans and three British. Canada, Ukraine, Germany, the United Kingdom and Afghanistan formed a team to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident.
Following the meeting at the Munich Security Conference, Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said: “On behalf of the mourning countries of this tragedy, we unequivocally told Minister Zarif that Iran must take measures to address many outstanding issues regarding facts and laws.”
Previously, he met with the head of the Iranian Ministry of international Relations to discuss the black box and compensation for the families of the victims.
“We want more than anyone else to know what is in the black box to find out what really happened,” Zarif said.
Champagne stated that the equipment needed to decrypt the box cannot be delivered to Tehran. According to him, the black box itself, which is the property of Ukraine International Airlines, should be transported to a third country – possibly France – for examination of the analysis of its contents.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadim Pristayko said that the necessary equipment is “difficult to transport. We must come to a common point when to do it. Since this is a sensitive issue, we want to give the Iranians some time to understand how to ensure full transparency of this procedure.”
A day earlier, on the sidelines of the conference, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he had set Zarif with a demand for a complete and independent investigation into a missile strike on a Ukrainian passenger plane.
Trudeau said: “Iran does not have the level of technical expertise, and, basically, the equipment needed to quickly analyze damaged black boxes. We are beginning to reach a consensus that France would be the right place to send these black boxes to quickly get the right information from them, and that’s what we encourage the Iranian authorities to agree to. “
Iran does not deny that it shot down an UIA airliner, saying it mistakenly mistook the plane for a missile launched by the US military. Following the assassination of Iranian general Kassem Suleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was on alert as they expected a potential attack from an American air base in Iraq.
Earlier, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran Zarif confirmed Tehran’s readiness to cooperate with Ukraine in investigating the circumstances of the UIA plane crash in Tehran.
