Iran Raps U.S. ‘Excuses’; Soviets Call for U.N. Fleet

Iran’s foreign minister today accused the United States of making excuses but not accepting responsibility for its destruction of an Iranian jetliner and the deaths of the 290 people aboard.

The Soviet Union said the U.S. Navy should leave the Persian Gulf to avoid future tragedies like the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655. It said an international U.N. fleet should replace the American warships.

As the Security Council resumed debate on the July 3 incident, the Soviets, Britain, France, China, Japan, and West Germany all called on Iran to accept a year-old council resolution calling for a cease-fire in the nearly 8-year-old Iran-Iraq War.

Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, said at a news conference that “the attitude of the U.S. Administration is similar to a rich man’s son who drives when he’s drunk. He thinks money can buy everything, and that is not true.”

The United States offered to pay compensation to the families of the victims but said it did so out of humanitarian concerns and not because it is legally obligated.

Velayati said the U.S. offer would be acceptable only “within the context of the United States accepting responsibility for shooting down the Iranian airliner.”

U.S. officials say Navy forces shot down the airliner because they thought it was an Iranian F-14 jet fighter.

During debate, the Soviet representative, Valentin V. Lozinskiy, said “the tragedy has demonstrated once again that the United States fleet must leave the waters of the Persian Gulf right away.”

“How can one regard as self-defense the destruction of a passenger airliner flying within an established air corridor many thousands of kilometers from the borders of the power that is allegedly defending itself?” he asked.

British U.N. official John Birch expressed his country’s “profound regret” over the loss of life but said the underlying cause of the disaster, and of all war-related casualties in the Persian Gulf, is Iran’s refusal to accept the cease-fire resolution.

Iran never decisively rejected the resolution but has insisted that Iraq be branded the aggressor.