BRUSSELS, Jan 10 (Reuters) – Iran’s air defence may have shot down the Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed near Teheran on Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board, the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday.
“It is important that we establish all the facts there… I call on Iran to fully participate and contribute to a transparent and thorough investigation,” Stoltenberg told reporters on entering an extraordinary meeting of EU foreign ministers.
“We have no reason to not believe the reports we have seen from different NATO allies… that the plane may have been downed by Iranian air defence systems,” he said.
“That’s exactly why we need a thorough investigation, to establish all the facts and that’s exactly why we have to have full cooperation from the Iranian side in such an investigation,” he said.
(Reporting by Jan Strupczewski and Marine Strauss; editing by Philip Blenkinsop)
