Iran to pay kin of shoot-down victims

STOCKHOLM — Iran has agreed to compensate the families’ of the foreign victims of a Ukrainian passenger plane that was shot down by Iranian forces outside Tehran in January, Sweden’s foreign minister said on Thursday.

“We have signed an agreement of mutual understanding that we will now negotiate together with Iran about amends, compensation to the victims’ next of kin,” Foreign Minister Ann Linde told Swedish news agency TT.

Iran had denied for days its involvement in the plane crash but then announced that its military had mistakenly and unintentionally shot down the Ukrainian jetliner, a Boeing 737 operated by Ukrainian International Airlines. All 176 people on board were killed.

Diplomats from nations that had lost citizens in the downing of the plane have for months been pushing Iran for more cooperation on the investigation and compensation issues.

The Iranian admission followed U.S. and Canadian intelligence reports indicating that Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces had downed the aircraft. Tehran blamed “human error” for the shoot-down. The jetliner went down Jan. 8 on the outskirts of Tehran during takeoff, just hours after Iran launched a barrage of missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq.

The five countries that are acting together against Iran on this issue are those with victims that were on board of the doomed plane: Sweden, Canada, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Afghanistan, the TT news agency said.