Iran pledged Wednesday at a meeting of UN civil aviation agency to hand over black boxes from downed Flight 752 to Ukraine or France for analysis, ending a two-month standoff over the fate of the recordings from the jet, which was shot down by the Iranian military on January 8 with the loss of all 176 people on board.

Iran's representative at the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, Farhad Parvaresh, said the devices would be sent to Kiev, adding that Tehran's civil aviation authority had also invited other interested countries to participate in reading the data.

They are expected to contain information about the last moments before the Ukraine International Airlines jetliner was struck by a missile and crashed shortly after taking off from the Tehran airport on January 8.

In Ottawa, Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne "welcomed" Iran's commitment to finally share the black boxes, saying this was "a step in the right direction by Iran."

"I take Iran at their word," he said, "but I would rather judge their actions once the black boxes are in Europe and we have our own experts who have been able to analyze (them)."

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Ukraine's ambassador to Canada, Andriy Schevchenko, in a tweet said his country also "welcomes Iran's decision" to hand them over, adding that "if additional expertise is needed," the flight data recorders would be forwarded to France for analysis.

Countries whose citizens died in the disaster – which included mostly Iranians but also Afghans, Britons, Canadians, Swedes and Ukrainians – had long been criticizing Iran's refusal to hand the plane's black boxes to Ukraine or one of the few countries capable of recovering and analysing the data they contain.

Canada repeatedly asked Iran to hand the plane's black boxes over to Ukraine or France for expert analysis.  At the ICAO meeting, Canadian Transportation Minister Marc Garneau stepped up the pressure, saying: "We cannot learn from the tragic shoot-down of PS752 unless all the facts are known and analyzed.

"Two months after the fact, we should all be increasingly concerned with Iran's failure to arrange for the readout of the flight recorders despite repeated requests," he said, according to his speaking notes.

"Iran must act now to arrange the readout of the flight recorders as a demonstration of continued willingness to provide a full and transparent account of this event that is consistent with their international obligations.

The disaster unfolded as Iran's defenses were on high alert in case the U.S. retaliated to Iranian strikes hours earlier on American troops stationed in Iraq – which were themselves in response to the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian commander.

(With input from Reuters, AFP)

(Cover: A flight recorder, also known as black box, purportedly recovered from the crashed Ukrainian airliner, Boeing 737-800, is seen in this still image taken from a video, in Teheran, Iran, January 10, 2020. /Reuters)