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Sergei Lavrov

MOSCOW. — Russia has no plans to seize flight recorders from the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, told Rossiya 24 channel. The seizure of flight records would violate international law as it is up to relevant international agencies to investigate the incident, he explained.

The analysis of the flight recorders “is the responsibility of ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation); it’s the responsibility of those states which have the most direct connection to this tragedy — the Netherlands, Malaysia and the states whose citizens were on board, and of course Ukraine,” Lavrov said.

Meanwhile, an international investigative commission should be organised under the aegis of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in the case of the Malaysian plane crash in Ukraine, the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) said yesterday.

“The IAC presumes that, given the complicated situation in the Boeing 777 crash site, it is necessary to form an international commission under the ICAO’s support for investigation,” the IAC said in a statement.

The crashed aircraft’s flight recorders should be handed over to the commission, it added.
Lavrov minister also called on the UN Security Council to urgently launch an open and impartial investigation into the plane crash in Ukraine.

“We want international experts to arrive on the crash site as soon as possible and retrieve the flight recorders in an instant,” the FM stressed. “Despite statements coming from Kiev, we have no plans to seize the flight recorders.”

The minister welcomed the plans of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to create a special commission to investigate the tragedy, but stressed that such a “group must be put together urgently, as soon as possible.”

The claims by the Ukrainian authorities that the crash of the Malaysian passenger jet was a terrorist act are unacceptable, Lavrov stressed.
“The Ukrainian investigators will be guided in their work (by those statements), which is unacceptable pressure on the activities of the commission,” he explained.
The Ukrainian emergency services have found two flight recorders at the Malaysian plane’s crash site, Konstantin Batozsky, an adviser to the Donetsk regional administration, said.

“Two flight recorders have been discovered by our emergency services. I have no information about where those flight recorders are at the moment,” Batozsky is cited by Interfax-Ukraine.

Previously, the self-defence forces of the People’s Republic of Donetsk announced that they had found the Malaysia Airlines MH17 flight recorders.
However, the self-proclaimed republic’s prime minister, Aleksandr Boroday, later said that he could not confirm this information.

“The items, which were earlier discovered by our troops, most likely, aren’t flight recorders,” Boroday is cited by Interfax. The Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 carrying almost 300 people on board crashed on Thursday as it was flying over Ukraine’s Donetsk Region.
The plane was apparently shot down by a surface-to-air missile, although both Kiev and the local militias fighting against it deny responsibility. — RT.