The Soviet Union agreed Wednesday to pay full compensation after a pilotless MiG-23 fighter crashed in southwestern Belgium, killing one man, Belgian Foreign Minister Mark Eyskens said.
He told a news conference the Soviet ambassador to Brussels had offered his country's deep regret for Tuesday's incident in which the sophisticated fighter flattened the house of the 19-year-old victim's parents."Mr. (Felix) Bogdanov told me the Soviet Union would pay all material and even moral damages," Eyskens said after meeting the Soviet ambassador.
The Soviet fighter flew across West Germany and the Netherlands before crashing into a Belgian border village. The pilot ejected in Poland after encountering technical problems.
Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov said East Bloc forces did not detect the aircraft and called for an investigation.
"It is difficult to explain why it was not shot down, why it was not detected," Yazov told the official Tass news agency in Moscow. "A large-scale investigation should be carried out."
Eyskens said he had agreed to a request made by Bogdanov that Soviet authorities be allowed to recover the plane. He said he had protested against the MiG's incursion into Belgian airspace.
He had also remarked on Soviet authorities' failure to give warning that the fighter was heading into Western airspace and on what he called Moscow's "extreme slowness" in publishing an official communique on the incident through Tass.
"He (Bogdanov) said he had no answer, no explanation," Eyskens said.
The minister said the incident showed that the system of exchanging information between the Warsaw Pact and NATO had to be improved.
NATO, which sent up two American F-15 fighters from the U.S. airbase in Soesterberg in the Netherlands to intercept the intruder over West Germany, also announced it would possibly be in touch with the Russians.
According to West German air force officials, the MiG took off from Kolobrzeg in Poland before going on its 625-mile flight across West Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.
Western Alliance and Belgian government officials said the two interceptor planes had not shot down the MiG because there had been no danger of it crashing on an urban area although it passed near the cities of Eindhoven and Antwerp.
They said they had been satisfied the aircraft, which carried no nuclear missiles or bombs, was not on an attacking mission.