Reuters - Iran will send the black boxes from a downed Ukrainian airliner to Ukraine, Iran�s minister of Roads and Urban Development, Mohammad Eslami, said on Wednesday, according to the Tasnim news agency.�

The Ukraine International Airlines flight was shot down on Jan. 8 by an Iranian ground-to-air missile, killing 176 people in what Tehran termed a �disastrous mistake� at a time of heightened tensions with the United States.

Ukraine initially lacked the technical capability to read the boxes but now says it has that ability, Eslami said. He said �the Americans� may have provided Ukraine with the necessary software and documents to read the black boxes of the 737-800 airliner made by U.S.-based Boeing Co.

The reading of the boxes will take place in coordination with the United Nations� International Civil Aviation Organization.

�The necessary coordination is in this way that the reading of the black box be done in the country of Ukraine in the presence of representatives of ICAO,� Eslami said. �And if the conditions aren�t provided then at that time the reading will take place together in France.�

The fate of the cockpit voice and data �black box� recorders has been the subject of an international standoff eclipsed by the coronavirus crisis, which Iran says has also contributed to delays in a probe by Iran�s Air Accident Investigation Board.

Iran�s envoy to ICAO said last week that France�s BEA air accident agency had been asked by Iranian investigators to read the black boxes if the BEA could accommodate this.

A spokesman for BEA said it had exchanged messages with Iran offering technical support and discussing logistics due to the coronavirus crisis, but added that Iran had not conveyed a formal decision on how to read the black boxes.


Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh and Tim Hepher; Editing by Matthew Lewis