Iran has told the United Nation's aviation agency that it will send black boxes from a downed Ukrainian passenger jet to Paris for analysis after it secures agreements with countries involved in the investigation.
Iran has refused to hand over the flight recorders from the Ukraine International Airlines flight, which was shot down on January 8 near Tehran by an Iranian surface-to-air missile, killing 176 people.
Nearly half of the people killed were Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada, which has pressed Iran to send the black boxes to France.
The other countries involved in the investigation are Ukraine and the United States.
In March, Iran told the U.N.'s aviation agency that it would send the black boxes to Ukraine.
But on June 10, a representative from Iran told a virtual meeting of the agency's governing council that Tehran would now send the heavily damaged recorders to BEA air accident investigation agency in France, according to two sources quoted by Reuters.
"Iran said they will send them to Paris soon subject to agreement of the states involved in the investigation," said one of the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A spokeswoman for Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau declined to comment on the question of the boxes being sent to Paris, but referred to the commitment Iran made in March.
"They showed an openness to transferring the black boxes but we want to see concrete action on their part to see it through," she said, according to Reuters.
Iranian officials were not immediately available for comment, the news agency said.
Under UN rules, Iran retains control of the investigation, while the United States and Ukraine are accredited as the countries where the jet was built and operated, respectively.
