Iran to Announce Cause of Ukraine Plane Crash as EU Demands Transparency

  • 1/11/2020
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Iran announced on Friday that it will announce on Saturday the reason for the crash of a Ukrainian jetliner earlier this week. The announcement will be made after a meeting of an Iranian commission focused on air accidents, Fars news said, but it gave no further details. Earlier, EU foreign ministers urged Tehran not to conceal anything about the fatal, as they met for crisis talks on tensions in the Middle East. Europe has been scrambling to contain two Iranian crises this week -- the fallout from the US killing a top Iranian general in Baghdad and Tehrans latest step back from the crumbling 2015 nuclear deal. But reports from several Western capitals indicating that the crash of a Ukrainian International Airlines Boeing 737 -- which killed 176 people -- appeared to have been caused by an Iranian air defense missile prompted calls for clarity from Tehran. "This is more than tragic... the important thing now is that everything is completely investigated," said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas as he arrived for the talks. "Nothing must be swept under the table, because if that were the case, it would be the breeding ground for new mistrust." His Dutch counterpart Stef Blok echoed his call, saying it was "very likely" an Iranian missile brought the plane down. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg added his voice to the calls for transparency and said he had "no reason to not believe" alliance members Britain and Canada when they blamed a missile for the crash. Fridays highly unusual emergency meeting was called in response to soaring tensions following the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in an American drone strike. Also Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaik told a Kiev briefing that a team of his countrys experts had been given access to the planes black box flight recorders and were receiving "full cooperation" from the Iranian authorities. "Our team has now got access to the black boxes," Prystaiko said, adding they had also been given access to the planes fragments and the crash site.

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