Official Soviet sources admitted for the first time yesterday that a Soviet fighter shot down the Korean jumbo jet last week and confirmed that the order to shoot was given by the general in charge of the Far East military region.
The confirmation that the Soviet Union was responsible for the destruction of the Korean Airlines plane, in which 269 people died, came in a carefully ╥leaked╙ statement from the Soviet embassy in Tokyo. The statement said Soviet fighters were forced to take the ╥most decisive╙ measures against the jumbo after ╥serious warnings╙ had been ignored and it had repeatedly violated Soviet airspace. A well-informed Soviet source confirmed that the ╥most decisive╙ measures referred to shooting down the airliner.
╥The South Korean aircraft, without any explanation from the pilot, several times violated Soviet airspace, committing a grave violation of international law,╙ the statement began. ╥The South Korean pilot did not react to several warnings and did not accept an order for an emergency landing╔ Soviet border planes could not take any other measures bar the most decisive ones after (these) serious warnings were given. These decisive measures are within the frame of international law.╙
The Soviet source stated that the fighter which shot down the KAL 747 was one of three MiG 23s which scrambled from the heavily fortified Soviet island of Sakhalin close to the Japanese island of Hokkaido. This contradicts the US version of events, according to which the fighter was an SU-15. The local Soviet military command was in no doubt that the airliner was a spy plane, the source added.
The Soviet territory over which the jumbo flew includes especially sensitive military regions. Inter-continental ballistic missiles are concentrated on the Kamhatka peninsula and Sakhalin, targetted on the US mainland. The Soviet Pacific fleet╒s base at Vladivostok is also used as a testing centre for many of the ICBMs, the source explained.
