ASTANA, December 28. /TASS/. No pressure is being exerted on Kazakhstan in the investigation of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash near Aktau airport, Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev has said.
"I will say right away that this is unreliable information. No one from any country is trying to interfere in the process of clarifying the circumstances of this air accident. We see no problems here," he said in an interview with the Tengrinews agency.
He noted that "Kazakhstan has ensured the wide participation of all countries interested in the investigation."
"In the first place, there are three countries concerned: Azerbaijan, Russian and Brazil - the plane’s manufacturer. All their representatives, a team of 17 - are already working. There is no point in putting pressure on anyone for any reason," he added.
Bozumbayev recalled that Kazakhstan had been a member of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation since 1992.
"In accordance with the convention, any decisions on aviation investigations are made by the country conducting the probe. Only we can make any decisions as to who is to be invited to work with us and so on. We make decisions independently, so that the public should have no suspicion at all someone may exert pressure on somebody else," he said.
Earlier, Bozumbayev told a news briefing that Kazakhstan would conduct the investigation of the airliner crash independently, within its jurisdiction. Astana is ready to cooperate with other countries and international experts. Experts from Brazil, the country that produced the airplane, had already arrived in Kazakhstan earlier.
The Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190, en route from Baku to Grozny, crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, on December 25. The plane carried 67 people, including 62 passengers, mainly citizens of Azerbaijan, as well as nationals of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and five crew members. According to the latest reports, 38 people, including seven Russians, died, while 29 others survived. Among the passengers there were 16 Russian citizens; 9 of them survived the crash and were taken to Moscow’s or federal medical centers.