James Jatras: Too early to determine cause of Russian plane crash

Press TV has interviewed James Jatras, a former US Senate foreign policy analyst in Washington, to ask for his take on the crash of a Russian passenger plane over Egypt this week.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: It seems that the Russian president is very keen to curb any speculations at this moment, now isn’t he?

Jatras: It seems so. But it seems to me that speculation is inevitable in a case like this. There is a difference between speculation and jumping to conclusions; and I hope everybody will keep an open mind about what could have happened in this case, and let the evidence lead where it may and hopefully be reported truthfully.

Press TV: Will the evidence be able to lead us to the answers or will the situation also get politicized?

Jatras: It is likely to be politicized. Again [Inaudible] there are three likely scenarios here. One is some of kind of mechanical failure, second some kind of a missile and thirdly some kind of explosive device planted on the plane. There are reasons to consider one or the other more likely than not. I think we have to wait and see where the evidence goes.

I just hope that when the evidence comes forward Russians will resist temptation to spin the evidence for political reasons. I have in mind for example, the American plane that was downed over Long Island some years ago, then many, many believed was brought down by missile but was implausibly technical failure. I hope the Russians will not try to massage the evidence that way.

Press TV: Another example that does come to mind is that of the airplane that crashed over eastern Ukraine of course and now over there we are waiting for something more concrete to come out because everybody has their own political agendas over there. However, it seems the parties here involved, at least, are less in number, so there is that chance for a transparent investigation to take place, now isn’t there?

Jatras: I hope so. You are right about that. Immediately after the MH17 crash, we had accusations obviously mostly directed against Russia with absolutely no evidence to back them up and here we are over a year later, and still no real evidence to back them up, but the well has already been poisoned you see. That is not yet happening in this case [inaudible]. Let’s see what the evidence points to. The only caveat there is if there is some sort of a danger, that it was an external event either a missile or bomb or something like that, we do know that fairly quickly so we can find out what those risks are for other potential targets.  

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