MOSCOW. Jan 24 (Interfax) - The Russian Embassy in Kabul possesses no information as to whether the fighter that approached dangerously close to a Russian passenger airliner over Afghanistan on Tuesday belonged to the international forces deployed in that country and does not plan to probe the incident on its own.
"No official information on this account has yet been released," embassy press secretary Stepan Anikeyev said in commenting on reports that the fighter could have belonged to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
Nor does the embassy plan to address the Afghan authorities or the ISAF command for explanations on the incident, he said.
"We will surely not do this, because this is a private airline and it is its business. We do not have such practice," he said.
It was reported earlier that a warplane closely approached a Russian Boeing 767 en route from Bali to Yekaterinburg over Kabul on January 22, 2013. Some reports said the fighter was as close to the Boeing as 100 feet, and there was a chance the planes might have collided.
Anikeyev suggested in an interview with Interfax on January 23 that the warplane could have belonged to ISAF in Afghanistan. "Afghanistan essentially has no air force, and they certainly don't have any fighters. It could have been an ISAF plane," he said.
An ISAF press officer told Interfax on Wednesday that she had no information on the incident.
Nevertheless, a high-ranking source in Moscow told Interfax that the fighter did belong to ISAF. "The fighter that approached the Russian Boeing had been painted in a way similar to how the NATO planes based in Afghanistan are painted. The plane had its red anti-collision flash beacons on," he said.
The NATO airbase took notice of the incident, the source said. "There was a report from the NATO base that they took notice of this information and would bear it in mind to prevent such incidents in the future," he added.
The NATO airbase in Afghanistan includes mostly U.S. Air Force planes, he said.