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The
International Civil Aviation Organization said members of its
36-nation council issued the call, nearly 10 months after a
Ukraine International Airlines flight was shot down by an
Iranian ground-to-air missile, killing 176 people.
"We have had several exchanges with the Iranian CAA in which we
urged its authorities to expedite the accident investigation,"
council president Salvatore Sciacchitano told a meeting of the
committee, according to ICAO.
Iran's representative to ICAO, however, said he had made a full
report to the council on the progress of the investigation.
A draft of the final report has been completed and is being
translated, Farhad Parvaresh told Reuters.
It will be sent to participating nations in "a couple of weeks,"
he said, adding that Iran was adhering to international rules on
air investigations known as Annex 13.
Those rules include a recommendation that the final report
appears within 12 months, which in this case runs until early
January, though many high-profile probes take longer.
Although the deadline has not yet been reached, some states
including Canada are concerned about what they view as a lack of
transparency, according to a person familiar with the
discussions.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has said it accidentally shot down
Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 on Jan. 8, mistaking
it for a missile at a time when tensions were high between Iran
and the United States.
Canada and families of the victims are pressing Iran for
additional answers following an initial report on the contents
of black boxes, which were sent to France for analysis in July.
Many of the 176 victims killed in the crash were Canadian
citizens or permanent residents.
Ukraine, where the Boeing 737 was operated, and the United
States, where it was designed and built, are automatically part
of any formal accident investigation under ICAO rules.
The rules say any participating nations should be given 60 days
to make comments before the final report can be published.
(Reporting by Shreyasee Raj, Allison Lampert, Tim Hepher;
Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Cynthia Osterman)
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