Belarus should face further action over plane diversion, US nominee says

President Joe Biden's nominee as US representative to a UN aviation body suggested on Wednesday that Belarus should be temporarily barred from voting at the council in response to its May diversion of a Ryanair flight. "More action needs to be taken," C. B. "Sully" Sullenberger told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on his nomination to be the US representative on the Council of the ICAO, the UN air safety body. He noted that under certain conditions ICAO "can temporarily remove the voting rights of a state for violating international norms... We should be pulling every lever necessary to hold accountable those responsible for this act." The Belarus air force intercepted the Ryanair plane flying between Athens and Vilnius on May 23 and forced it to land in Minsk. Belarusian authorities arrested a dissident journalist and his girlfriend who were on the plane. Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, asked at the hearing what options ICAO has "in order to prevent a repeat of these kind of actions." Sullenberger said the Belarus arrest of journalist Roman Protasevich "showed flagrant disregard for international norms of aviation security and safety." Sullenberger said ICAO "must ensure that those standards are upheld" and he vowed to push for a full chronology of what happened.<br/>