Here are excerpts of the speech to the Security Council on Thursday by Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Velayati of Iran, delivered in Farsi and translated by the Iranian Mission: In the morning of Sunday July 2, 1988, families and friends of 290 passengers and crew said farewell to their loved ones in Tehran and Bandar Abbas airports _ unaware of the dastardly attack that awaited them, unaware of the tragic destiny that would be imposed upon them by a reckless and incompetent naval force led by aggressive and expansionist policy-makers. According to the transcript of the communication between the pilot and Bandar Abbas tower, before permission for takeoff was granted the tower asked the pilot to make sure that his transponder was turned on. Positive response from the pilot was received. The plane was flying on a scheduled flight using the internationally established and published Amber 59 airway that is used at least 14 times a week, five of which between the same two airports. The plane was then climbing to the prescribed altitude at about 320 knots per hour. Seconds after the last communication between the plane and the tower, the plane was targeted by two surface-to-air Standard guided missiles from USS Vincennes, the most technologically sophisticated naval ship. ... The plane ws shot when it was at the center line of Amber 59 airway. USS Vincennes had well over 14 minutes _ and not four minutes as American officials have claimed _ of prior knowledge that the target was a civilian airliner on a scheduled flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. Another story which was fabricated to misguide the international public opinion was the claim by the United States that the airliner was not transmitting the appropriate signals. Adm. Crowe claimed on July 3, 1988: ``There were electronic indications on Vincennes that led it to believe that the aircraft was an F-14.'' Notwithstanding the fact that the Iranian air force had no F-14 operations in the morning of that unfortunate Sunday in or around the Strait of Hormuz, it may be noted that the military experts well-familiar with F-14 and its capabilities have held that F-14 could not have presented any serious danger to the USS Vincennes or any surface target for that matter. F-14 fighters, as it should be known most vividly to the Americans who made them, are designed for air-to-air attack and not air-to-surface operations. Possibly the most fallacious argument of the American officials in justifying their inexplicable crime was a claim that the airliner did not respond to the alleged warnings issued by the warship. While every available evidence including the transcripts read earlier show that the pilot of the airliner did not receive any warning, many have contended that in such a short and routine flight, the pilot was not indeed required to monitor the emergency civilian frequency. Furthermore, because the ship failed to identify the target of its alleged warnings, the pilot of the airliner of a scheduled flight should not have reasonably taken it as directed against himself. Finally, the most awkward American explanation for shooting down a civilian airliner was presented by Adm. Crowe, who claimed that the plane was coming onto the USS Vincennes in a war zone, while descending and increasing speed of 450 miles an hour. It is necessary to note that the area where the plane was attacked is well outside the declared war zones of the combatants. This fact is attested to even by Lloyd's of London. The question that needs to be asked is why a warship had positioned itself right at the center of a civilian airway. Furthermore, positioning itself right in the middle of an international civil airway, it is ironic that the ship expected the plane to go outside of the corridor, not be coming onto the Vincennes. All available evidence suggest(s) that the shooting down of an Iranian civil airliner ... could not have been a mistake. Certainly the huge difference in appearance, size, weight, and flight pattern between an Airbus and those of an F-14, whic is almost a fourth of the former, would make any claim of mistaken identity absurd. Rather, the course of events during that day clearly shows that the U.S. warships in the area had clear aggressive intentions, which resulted in the massacre of 290 innocent people.
The Iranian Foreign Minister, Ali-Akbar Velayati, spoke to the Security Council of the United Nations and gave the Iranian version of the shooting down of an Iranian commercial Airbus. He said that all available evidence shows that the disaster could not have been caused by a mistake by the crew of the Vincennes. The huge difference between the configuration of an airbus and a fighter renders absurd any claim of mistaken identity. In his statement on Tuesday, Mr. Velayati said: “The aircraft was flying in international airspace when it came under attack from two unidentified aircraft.