Tuesday, 12 June 2012

Lockerbie imbalance

[This is the heading over a letter from B Seymour of Victoria, Australia, in the current edition of the Guardian Weekly.  It reads as follows:]

With reference to the leader comment on the Lockerbie bombing (25 May), wasn't this about the same time that a US warship mistakenly shot down an Iranian commercial aircraft in the Persian Gulf? As I recall, hundreds of pilgrims to Mecca were killed. The US made a formal apology and that was the end of it.

We are angry about what is done to us, but not at what we do to others.
[The following paragraph is taken from the Wikipedia article Iran Air Flight 655:]
 In 1996, the United States and Iran reached "an agreement in full and final settlement of all disputes, differences, claims, counterclaims" relating to the incident at the International Court of Justice.* As part of the settlement, the United States agreed to pay US$61.8 million, an average of $213,103.45 per passenger, in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims. However, the United States has never admitted responsibility, nor apologized to Iran.**

No comments:

Post a Comment