Iran Warns against Politicization of Ukrainian Plane Incident

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Seyed Abbas Mousavi reminded the government of Canada that Tehran has been fully cooperative with all affected countries whose nationals have lost their lives during the plane incident of January 8, and called on Ottawa to avoid politicizing the incident.

News ID: 448504

Date: 18 January 2020 - 22:12

RNA - “This is strange that the Canadian FM, only a day after doing initial measures and besides Iran’s full cooperation, reads such a statement and asks for a consular access, which was agreed upon and delivered accordingly by Iran on the first day of the incident due to human aspects of the issue,” Mousavi said on Friday, after the London meeting of officials from 5 countries whose citizens died in an unintentional downing of Ukrainian flight in the Southwestern outskirt of Tehran.

The diplomat added that Tehran is surprised with some of the remarks made on the sidelines of the quinquepartite meeting in London.

Mousavi described that “in past years, the Islamic Republic has asked Canada to let consular representative offices be active in the two countries; however, the Canadian government has refused the issue due to the US pressure on Iranian citizens," he said, "The motivation of the Canadians’ latest remarks are not clear to us.”

Expressing condolences with the families of the victims of the flight, the Iranian spokesman underlined that the Islamic Republic has had very good cooperation with the dispatched foreign delegations studying the case in Iran.

“All the bodies of the victims have been identified and Iran is in full cooperation with all the affiliated countries and will continue doing so as far as the regulations require,” he added.

To respect the families of the victims, he called on all the parties to let the procedures be done without any marginal disputes and not to mingle the issue with political motivations.

The remarks come as representatives of Canada, Ukraine, Sweden, Afghanistan, and Britain, whose citizens were killed in the tragic Ukrainian plane crash which was unintentionally downed by Iranian defense systems last Wednesday, held a meeting in London. In a statement, the mentioned countries asked Tehran to pay compensation, noting that Tehran should hold a "thorough, independent and transparent international investigation open to grieving nations."

Early on last Wednesday, a Boeing 737 plane carrying 180 passengers and crew, mostly Iranians, crashed shortly after takeoff from Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran, leaving no survivors.

The General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces said in a statement on Saturday that the Ukrainian Boeing 737 plane was shot down as a hostile object due to human error at a time of heightened US threats of war.

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei in a message on Saturday extended his condolences again on the death of the Ukrainian plane's passengers, and ordered the Armed Forces to take the needed measures to find faults and flaws that have led to the bitter incident and prevent repetition of similar incidents in future.

Also, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani extended condolences to the families of those killed in the Ukrainian plane incident, and promised that all those who have been guilty in the unforgivable mistake of shooting down the jet will be prosecuted.

According to Fars News Agency, Russian State Duma (parliament's lower house) Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin blamed the United States for the exacerbation of tensions in the Middle East that led to the launch of the Iranian missile at the passenger plane of the Ukraine International Airlines near Tehran.

On Tuesday, a tripartite investigation team, made up of experts from Iran, Ukraine, and Canada, was formed in the Islamic Republic’s capital city to open probe into the causes of the unfortunate Ukrainian passenger plane incident in the Southwestern outskirt of Tehran.

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