Iran seeks help reading downed plane's black boxes in new standoff

[January 21, 2020]  By Alexander Cornwell and Babak Dehghanpisheh

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran said it had asked the U.S. and French authorities for equipment to download information from black boxes on a downed Ukrainian airliner, potentially angering countries which want the recorders analyzed abroad.

Canada, 57 of whose citizens were among the 176 people killed in the crash, has said France should handle the flight data and voice recorders as one of the few nations with the capability. Kiev wants the recorders sent to Ukraine.

The U.S.-built Boeing 737 flown by Ukraine International Airlines was shot down in error on Jan. 8.

Tehran, already embroiled in a long-running standoff with the United States over its nuclear program that briefly erupted into tit-for-tat military strikes this month, has given mixed signals about whether it would hand over the recorders.

An Iranian aviation official had said on Saturday the black boxes would be sent to Ukraine, only to backtrack in comments reported a day later, saying they would be analyzed at home.

A further delay in sending them abroad is likely to increase international pressure on Iran, whose military has said it shot the plane down by mistake while on high alert in the tense hours after Iran fired missiles at U.S. targets in Iraq.

Iran, which took several days to acknowledge its role in bringing down the plane and faced street protests at home as a result, launched its missiles at U.S. targets in response to a U.S. drone strike that killed a top Iranian commander on Jan. 3.

"If the appropriate supplies and equipment are provided, the information can be taken out and reconstructed in a short period of time," Iran's Civil Aviation Organization said in its second preliminary report on the disaster released late on Monday.

Its initial report was released just 24 hours after the incident, before Iran's military acknowledged its role.

A list of equipment Iran needs has been sent to French accident agency BEA and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the Iranian aviation body said.

"Until now, these countries have not given a positive response to sending the equipment to (Iran)," it said. It said two surface-to-air TOR-M1 missiles had been launched minutes after the Ukrainian plane took off from Tehran.

'MAXIMUM PRESSURE'

Iran's aviation body said in its report it did not have equipment needed to download information from the model of recorders on the three-year-old Boeing 737.

Iran has for years faced U.S. sanctions that limited its ability to purchase modern planes and buy products with U.S. technology. Many passenger planes used in Iran are decades old.

General view of the debris of the Ukraine International Airlines, flight PS752, Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed after take-off from Iran's Imam Khomeini airport, on the outskirts of Tehran, Iran January 8, 2020 is seen in this screen grab obtained from a social media video via REUTERS

Under Tehran's 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, Iran received sanctions relief in return for curbing its nuclear work. But Washington reimposed U.S. sanctions after withdrawing from the pact in 2018, a move that led to the steady escalation of tension in recent months between the United States and Iran.

Responding to U.S. President Donald Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign designed to shut off Iran's oil exports, Tehran has scaled back its commitments to the nuclear accord.

After Iran's latest move this month to scrap limits on uranium enrichment, a process that can make material for nuclear warheads although Tehran denies any such aim, Britain, France and Germany triggered the nuclear pact's dispute mechanism.

Launching the mechanism starts a diplomatic process that could lead to reimposing U.N. sanctions on Iran.

European capitals say they want to save the deal but have also suggested it may be time for a broader pact, in line with Trump's call for a deal that would go beyond Iran's nuclear work and include its missile program and activities in the region.

Iran says it will not negotiate with sanctions in place.

The Iranian general killed in the U.S. drone strike, Qassem Soleimani, was responsible for building up a network of militias that created an arc of Iranian influence across the Middle East.

Since the plane disaster, Iran's judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi has said compensation should be paid to families of the victims, many of whom were Iranians or dual nationals.

Canada, Ukraine, Britain, Afghanistan and Sweden, which all lost citizens, have demanded Iran make the payouts. Canada's Transportation Safety Board said two of its investigators had spent six days in Iran and visited the wreckage. Iranian investigators had been "cooperative and helpful", it said.

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell and Babak Dehghanpisheh; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Catherine Evans and Peter Graff)

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