BRUSSELS, August 4. /ITAR-TASS/. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is trying to pressure the investigation of the Malaysian Boeing crash in Ukraine by stating in an interview about the alleged evidence of someone’s complicity in this tragedy. Russia’s permanent delegation to NATO gave such an assessment on Monday.

“NATO Secretary General decided not to wait for the MH17 crash investigation to end, but to exert pressure on it,” a comment by the delegation says.

Chair of the State Duma’s Committee for International Affairs Alexei Pushkov has also criticized the statements by Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

“If Rasmussen had convincing evidence of militia’s fault for the downed Boeing, he would provide it,” Pushkov said in his Twitter. “However, he does not have anything but rhetoric.” “It would be better if Rasmussen explained why in Libya, after NATO’s ‘victory’, a bloody chaos came, and now the whole world and his wife is fleeing such ‘democracy’,” the lawmaker added.

 

Statements of NATO Secretary General

On Sunday, in an interview to French newspaper Midi Libre, Anders Fogh Rasmussen named the separatists guilty of what has happened. NATO Secretary General characterized the July 17 tragedy as a military crime.

“We have numerous data that indicate that the guilty separatists supported by Russia,” he stressed. “While I support the conduct full and independent international investigation to establish the facts,” Fogh Rasmussen added. He declined to comment on what kind of information pointing to the guilt of one or another party was available to NATO.

NATO headquarters declined to elaborate on the matter citing policies that do not allow commenting intelligence data.

 

Reports about NATO planes

July 18, a source in Brussels told ITAR-TASS that two planes of airborne early warning AVACS NATO were on combat duty over Romania and Poland in the moment of the catastrophe.

“In the moment of the catastrophe, two AVACS planes were in the air: one in the air space of Poland, and the other – in the air space of Romania. Data obtained by them will be thoroughly studied,” the source reported. “The distance from the nearest AVACS to the crash spot was about 1,000 km. This is too far away to see how it happened,” the source specified.

According to open source data, this type of planes is able to simultaneously track more than 200 air targets. Big air targets (bombers, transport planes, civil airliners) are located by AVACS at a distance of up to 600 km.