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Idea of tribunal over flight MH17 aimed at covering up inefficient investigation

Russia is the only country that provided the data from its radars for investigation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov notes
The site of MH17 crash in Donbas (archive) TASS/Mikhail Pochuev
The site of MH17 crash in Donbas (archive)
© TASS/Mikhail Pochuev

KUALA LUMPUR, August 5. /TASS/. There will be more opportunities to bring those guilty of flight MH17 crash in Donbas to responsibility upon the end of investigation of the tragic accident, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.

"At the meeting with the Malaysian Foreign Minister on Wednesday, I felt full understanding of Russia’s position, which insists on establishing truth," Lavrov said. "Russia is the only country that provided the data from its radars for investigation, while the US didn’t provide the data from its satellites and Ukraine didn’t provide the recordings of conversations between its air controllers."

He stressed the importance of the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2166 as a continued basis for control over the investigation.

"The initiative to set up a tribunal (for bringing to justice the masterminds and perpetrators of the MH17 tragedy — TASS) pursues the goal of covering up the inefficiency of the investigation conducted by the Dutch Safety Board, which runs counter to Resolution 2166 that envisions a thorough and comprehensive investigation under the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organization," Lavrov said.

"The UN Security Council has never initiated the setting up of investigative bodies or tribunals in connection with the crashes of civilian jets in the past, as it has always regarded such cases as criminal offenses," Lavrov said. "It has never considered air crashes as threats to international peace."

"The investigation should be transparent when it is gets to an end — and it won’t be over right now, probably by the yearend," he said. "Then there’ll be many opportunities to bring the guilty ones to account, including the initiatives of a number of countries to set up national courts for the purpose."

"The problem is some quarters prefer to stage propaganda games over the situation because they don’t have enough arguments, and that’s why this idea (of an international tribunal under the UN auspices — TASS) was put forward more than a year after the crash."

"As we express solidarity with the Malaysian people, we praise Malaysia’s approach to the tragedy without any attempts at speculations," Lavrov said. "Belgium, Ukraine, the Netherlands, and Australia have set up their own mechanism of investigation without asking anyone’s opinion or turning to the UN Security Council but they haven’t invited Malaysia there."