THE TRAGEDY OF FLIGHT 655 : Iran Asks Security Council to Convene, Condemn U.S.

UNITED NATIONS —  Iran’s U.N. ambassador called Tuesday for an urgent meeting of the Security Council to condemn the United States for shooting down an Iranian passenger jet.

Ambassador Mohammed Mahallati also told a news conference that contrary to assertions of U.S. officials, the Iranian Airbus, with 290 people aboard, was sending out “normal signals . . . to all radar that it was a civilian plane.”

Mahallati said an apology from the United States “cannot wash away the blood,” but said the Reagan Administration should apologize, withdraw immediately from the Persian Gulf and take a neutral stand in the Iran-Iraq War.

He said he met earlier in the day with Security Council President Paulo Nogueira-Batista of Brazil and requested an urgent meeting of the council on the subject of Sunday’s attack on the jetliner by the U.S. guided-missile cruiser Vincennes.

The United States says the ship’s commander mistakenly believed that the civilian aircraft was an F-14 jet fighter preparing to attack his ship. President Reagan says the United States will not withdraw from the Persian Gulf.

Mahallati said the Security Council should call on the United States to immediately withdraw its forces from the gulf “to terminate this kind of barbarism.”

He denounced the disaster as “premeditated” action by the United States and condemned the “awkward logic in the U.S. cover-up story about mistaken identity.”

Mahallati said Iranian military officials told him that “the plane for . . . 14 minutes . . . was disseminating the normal signals all civilian planes have, which proves to any radar that this is a civilian plane.”

“The question is how the most sophisticated American warship in the Persian Gulf could not receive it,” he said.