Ukraine President Presses Allies for Evidence on Plane Crash in Iran - The New York Times
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KYIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine pleaded with the United States and other Western countries on Friday to release the evidence that a Ukrainian passenger jet that crashed shortly after takeoff in Iran had been shot down.
Mr. Zelensky said the possibility that a missile had downed the Ukraine International Airlines plane on Wednesday, killing all 176 aboard, “cannot be ruled out but is not currently confirmed.”
American and allied officials said on Thursday that they had intelligence that surface-to-air missiles fired by Iranian military forces shot down the Boeing 737 minutes after it took off from Tehran, headed for Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
The jet crashed hours after Iran fired ballistic missiles at American targets in Iraq in retaliation for the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the leader of a powerful branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and was bracing for a possible American response.
Mr. Zelensky has pledged to get to the bottom of what happened, cutting short a trip to Oman immediately after the crash and dispatching a team of 45 Ukrainian experts to Tehran.
On Friday, Mr. Zelensky made it clear that Western governments, allies in his country’s conflict with Russia, had not shared the evidence that led them to believe that the Ukrainian jet had been shot down by Iran.
“The version that a missile hit the airplane cannot be ruled out, but currently cannot be confirmed,” Mr. Zelensky said in a statement posted to Facebook on Friday morning. “Given the latest announcements made by countries’ leaders in the news media, we call on our international partners — first and foremost the governments of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain — to provide the data and the evidence concerning the catastrophe to the commission investigating its causes.”
Mr. Zelensky said he planned to speak with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday about the investigation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain both said Iran had probably shot down the plane by accident.
President Trump said he suspected that the downing of the plane had been the result of “a mistake on the other side,” although he did not provide any details about what led to that assessment.
An American official told The New York Times that the United States had a high level of confidence that a Russian-made Iranian air defense system had fired two surface-to-air missiles at the plane.
The crash of the Ukrainian jet has presented Mr. Zelensky, a 41-year-old comedian who swept to a stunning victory in the presidential election last spring, with the most urgent crisis of his short tenure.
Already caught up in American domestic politics amid the impeachment spectacle on Capitol Hill, Mr. Zelensky must now navigate the geopolitical showdown between two longtime adversaries: the United States, Kyiv’s most powerful partner, and Iran.
“Our goal is to ascertain the undeniable truth,” Mr. Zelensky said in his statement on Friday. “We believe this is the responsibility of the whole international community before the families of the dead and the memory of the victims of the catastrophe.”
Iran has maintained that there was no evidence that the plan was struck by a missile and doubled down on that assertion on Friday. Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization chief, Ali Abedzadeh, speaking during a Friday news conference, urged caution and said that nothing could be determined until the data from the black boxes was analyzed and said statements made by other nations were politically motivated.
But, he added, what could be said was that the plane had not been hit by a missile and was likely on fire before it crashed. He also urged nations with intelligence on the crash, namely the United States and Canada, to share that information with Iran.
“We cannot just give you speculation,” Mr. Abedzadeh said in footage televised and translated on Iranian state television. “So far what I can tell you is that the plane has not been hit by a missile, and we have to look for the cause of the fire.”
Megan Specia contributed reporting from London.
2020-01-10 08:41:00Z
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