Sweden: Iran to compensate Ukraine plane crash victims

Iran has agreed to compensate the families’ of the foreign victims of a Ukrainian passenger plane that was shot down by Iranian forces outside Tehran in January, Sweden’s foreign minister said on Thursday. “We have signed an agreement of mutual understanding that we will now negotiate together with Iran about amends, compensation to the victims’ next of kin,” Foreign Minister Ann Linde told Swedish news agency TT. Iran had denied for days its involvement in the plane crash but then announced that its military had mistakenly and unintentionally shot down the Ukrainian jetliner, a Boeing 737 operated by Ukrainian International Airlines. All 176 people on board were killed. The Iranian admission followed US and Canadian intelligence reports indicating that Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces had downed the aircraft. Tehran blamed “human error” for the shoot-down. The jetliner went down Jan. 8 on the outskirts of Tehran during takeoff, just hours after Iran launched a barrage of missiles at US forces in Iraq. Asked whether Iran will really pay compensation, Linde replied,“ there is no doubt about that.” “We expect that we will be able to have the first concrete negotiation meeting in a very short time,” Linde was quoted as saying. Her press secretary said that the International Coordination and Response Group “has now achieved its primary objective of agreeing on a memorandum of understanding to enter, jointly as a united group, into negotiations with Iran on full reparations for the victims.”<br/>