Iran agrees to send black boxes of crashed jet to Ukraine

Iran's aviation authority has agreed to send black boxes from a downed Ukrainian jetliner to Kiev for analysis, Iran's representative at the United Nations' aviation agency told Reuters on Wednesday.

Farhad Parvaresh, who heads Iran's delegation at the UN's Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), said Tehran's civil aviation authority had also invited other interested countries to participate in reading the data. The move ends a two-month stand-off over the fate of the recordings from the jet, which was shot down by the Iranian military on Jan 8 with the loss of all 176 people on board.

Two sources directly familiar with the matter said Iran had made the announcement to ICAO's governing council. "They did agree ... that in the next two weeks or so they will bring the black boxes to Ukraine for reading and if that isn't possible they would go to France," a Canadian government source said. ICAO was not immediately available for comment.

Canada, which had 57 citizens on board the flight, and other countries had consistently pressured Tehran for access to the boxes.