Foreigners identified among crash victims in Peru

State-run TANS airline of Peru identified Wednesday 12 of the 17 foreign nationals traveling on board the plane that crashed Tuesday northeast of the country, resulting in at least 41 deaths and 57 survivors.

TANS said through a communique that of the total number of foreign citizens affected by the accident, 10 are hospitalized and seven continue missing. The accident occurred close to the airport of Pucallpa, capital of Ucayali, northeast Peru.

The hospitalized foreign citizens are Doylith Cauper (Australia) , Letizia Onorati and Simone Simonini (Italy), and Joshelin, Jacquelin and Jharline Vivas Rosas, Jose Vivas Caballero, Diana Vivas Martinez, Gabriel Vivas and Nataly Salazar (United States).

Meanwhile, Colombian Liliana Narvaez, US Steve Beacon, and two Spanish and three other US citizens continue missing.

The State-run airline said there were 98 occupants, including 92 passengers and six crew members.

The airliner - a Boeing 737-200 - crashed in a forested area, six kilometers from Pucallpa airport, where it was about to land as a stopover in a flight coming from Lima and bound for the Amazonic city of Iquitos.

According to TANS the plane was going to land with adverse weather conditions that included heavy winds and rain.

Source: Xinhuaat it was Europe, not Iran, which breached the Paris Agreement reached by the two sides in October 2004, which serves as the footstone of the bilateral nuclear negotiations.

"The Europeans interpreted and violated the Paris Agreement unilaterally," Asefi said, adding that the EU had ignored Iran's legal rights on peaceful nuclear energy and refrained from providing Iran with firm guarantees of such rights.

The fundamental discrepancy between the two sides lies in Tehran's firm fixedness and Europe's insistent disallowance over Iran's program to construct nuclear reactors, especially work uranium enrichment activities, which Iran suspended in November 2004 according to the Paris Agreement.

The European trio had successfully persuaded Iran's previous reformist government led by President Mohammad Khatami to suspend all of its sensitive nuclear activities before Ahmadinejad, a well- know conservative, came into power in early Aug.

Iran resumed uranium conversion activities, a preparatory step for the enrichment, on Aug. 8 and harshly rejected a nuclear proposal presented by Britain, France and Germany, the European trio negotiating with Tehran on behalf on the union.

However, Tehran has underlined repeatedly that the resumption had nothing to do with the new government and it was a long-brooded decision made collectively by all leaders of the Islamic Republic.

Tehran's defiant move has drawn stern warnings from the EU and the United States. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has also adopted a resolution to urge Iran to re-establish full suspension of all enrichment-related activities.

Nevertheless, top officials of the Islamic Republic have unanimously posed a tough stance, saying the disputes on the country's uranium conversion activities have been concluded and Iran is ready to talk with the EU on the restarting of uranium enrichment.

With the approval of the Majlis on Wednesday, Manuchehr Mottaki, foreign minister of the new cabinet, will feature Iran's nuclear diplomacy in the coming four years, along with Ali Larijani, another ultra-conservative appointed as secretary of the SNSC and chief nuclear negotiator on Aug. 15.

Mottaki said recently that he would seek to promote "balanced ties with various countries" and publicly announce the latest developments in Iran's nuclear dossier as soon as he assumed office.

Larijani also declared one day after his appointment that Iran would "never give up its plans to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle" but was willing to continue talks with the EU.

Source: Xinhua