Zarfi, Ukranian counterpart meet in Munich

Iranian FM Zarif and his Ukrainian counterpart Vadym Prystaiko met and held talks in Munich on Saturday.

During the meeting, held on the sidelines of Munich Security Conference 2020, the two sides discussed the latest situation about the unintentionally-downed Ukrainian airplane by Iran.

The two foreign ministers underlined the significance of taking measures to heal the wounds of the families of the incident's victims.

Zarif and Prystaiko had held a phone conversation earlier in mid-January, when Zarif voiced Iran's readiness for handing over the bodies of Ukrainian nationals of Ukraine's 737 plane victims and allowing that country's experts to be involved in examining the black box and the other side appreciated Iran for the speedy declaration of responsibility for the incident and its cooperation in all stages.

Zarif has urged against any attempt at politicizing the recent tragedy involving unintentional shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane outside Tehran.

The black box of the plane has not been decoded yet. Iran says there are still a lot of unknowns and it wants to know more than anybody else what’s in the black box and what actually happened.

“The black box is available to all the parties to this, [including] the United States as the country that manufactured the plane,” Zarif said in mid-February, “We will not touch the black box without the presence of all interested parties."

Carrying 167 passengers and nine crewmembers, Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 crashed outside Iran’s capital on January 8, moments following takeoff from the city’s Imam Khomeini airport, after being mistakenly identified by Iranian air defenses with an incoming cruise missile.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic later identified the cause of the incident as human error.