Black box not from '94 crash
2004-03-18 12:51
New York - Initial tests indicate that a 'black box' flight recorder sent to the United Nations 10 years ago is not linked to a 1994 plane crash that triggered Rwanda's genocide, but additional investigation is needed, a UN spokesperson said.
In a major embarrassment for the United Nations and Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the recorder was discovered a week ago in a filing cabinet in the UN's Air Safety Unit, where it apparently languished for a decade after arriving by diplomatic pouch from the UN Mission in Rwanda.
On Tuesday, UN officials took the black box to the US National Transportation Safety Board in Washington where it was opened in the presence of experts from the International Civil Aviation Organisation, a UN agency based in Montreal, UN spokesperson Fred Eckhard said on Wednesday.
500 000 killed
After last week's discovery, there was speculation the recorder might have been from a Falcon 50 plane shot down on that date while carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his counterpart from Burundi from a meeting in Tanzania. The genocide in Rwanda began as news of Habyarimana's death spread, and by the time it ended more than 500 000 people had been killed.
According to Eckhard, the aviation experts on Tuesday found that the black box - which was labelled a cockpit voice recorder - contained tapes lasting about 30 minutes that recorded some conversation in French.
"Nothing heard so far on the tape links the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) to the aircraft crash on April 6, 1994 in Rwanda," he said on Wednesday.
Will take time
"Additional expert attention, as is normally the case, will be required to determine the exact contents of the tape and that process will take a bit more time," Eckhard said. "Only when we have this additional review can we draw any definite conclusions about the recorder."
After the tapes were listened to in Washington, copies were made for the Civil Aviation Organisations and taken to Canada for further expert examination.
The originals were returned to UN headquarters by officials from the Office of Internal Oversight Services, the UN watchdog which is investigating what happened in 1994, Eckhard said.
The cockpit voice recorder was displayed in the UN spokesperson's office on Wednesday afternoon. It had an Air France sticker on the front, though Eckhard said that didn't necessarily mean it came from an Air France plane.
The rectangular-shaped recorder was made by Fairchild Industrial Products of Comack, New York, and bore the serial number 6285. It arrived at UN headquarters with a sticker saying Unamir - the initials of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda - and the date 6/4/94. Eckhard asked for help in identifying it.
There was an unsuccessful attempt in 1994 to trace the plane from the serial number, he said. After last week's discovery, there have been new efforts, so far unsuccessful, to trace the number, "but that effort will continue," Eckhard said.
- AP