Israel has accused the governing council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) of exceeding its mandate and ignoring the facts when it adopted a resolution here Monday night which condemned Israel for shooting down a Libyan airliner over Sinai last Feb. 21. Meir Rosenne, an advisor to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem who headed the Israeli delegation attending the ICAO council session as observers, said his country regarded the condemnation “as unjustified and unjustifiable.”
Rosenne stressed at a press conference here that the resolution which the 30-member council, adopted by a 27-0 vote completely ignored the report of an ICAO investigating team which found that the negligence and incompetence of Egyptian and Libyan air control authorities created the situation from which the disaster resulted.
Rosenne also stated that under the 1967 Chicago convention of the ICAO the council has no right to condemn the actions of any ICAO member state. He said the sole mandate of the governing council in the Libyan airliner incident was to take technical and administrative action to preclude the occurrence of a similar disaster. According to Rosenne, the ICAO council’s resolution contributed to “politicizing the tragedy” instead of taking preventive measures.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
