United Nations, May 27 (SocialNews.XYZ) The current European Union (EU) members of the UN Security Council, Estonia, France and Ireland, plus previous council members of Belgium and Germany, have strongly the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Belarus earlier this week.
The above mentioned nations were also on Wednesday joined by the current council members of the UK, Norway and the US in condemning Sunday's incident, reports Xinhua news agency.
"The airplane, owned by a EU company, carrying more than 100 passengers from one EU member state's capital to another, was forced to land based on false grounds by a Belarusian military aircraft," a joint statement issued by the countries said.
"These acts are a blatant attack on international civilian aviation safety and on European security and show flagrant disregard for international law," it added.
They called on the International Civil Aviation Organization to urgently investigate this "unprecedented and unacceptable" incident and for full accountability for those responsible.
Irish airline Ryanair said in a statement on Sunday that its flight FR4978 from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, was notified by Belarusian authorities of "a potential security threat on board" and was "instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk".
"Nothing untoward was found," it added.
The flight later took off again and landed in the Lithuanian capital on Sunday night after a seven-hour detour.
In an updated statement on Monday, Ryanair said that it "condemns the unlawful actions of Belarusian authorities", calling it "an act of aviation piracy".
In response, EU member states have agreed to cut the bloc's air links with Belarus following "the unprecedented and unacceptable incident".
The leaders urged the European Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines; prevent access to bloc's airports of Belarusian flights; and called on all EU-based carriers to avoid overflight of Belarus.
Source: IANS
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