Lithuania intends to read crashed Russian plane's flight data with NATO

Lithuanian investigators have asked NATO allies for help reading the flight data recorders found in the wreckage of a Russian jet that crashed in the country last week.

Lithuania lacks the technology needed to read the two flight data recorders, or black boxes, found in the wreckage of the Su-27 fighter bomber, Gen. Vitalijus Vaiksmoras said.

From his words Russian military officials will be allowed only to observe the investigation of the black boxes. Meanwhile the plane crashed last week near the village of Ploksciai, 120 miles northwest of Vilnius, while en route from St. Petersburg to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. It was flying as part of a convoy through an agreed "corridor" over the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Lithuanian prosecutors are holding the pilot, Maj. Valery Troyanov, on suspicion of "violating international flight regulations," despite Moscow's demands that they hand him back to Russia, the AP reports.