Japan and South Korea have proclaimed in official statements that Boris Yeltsin's recent disclosure of documents on the KAL 007 tragedy was "unsatisfactory". Both countries, seeking more information, have protested.


Is there a layer of obscurantism still covering up the whole truth about the ill-fated Korean Airlines flight shot down over Sakhalin Island nine years ago with a loss of 269 lives?


Tokyo and Seoul could provide some answers too. Here are some questions for all parties:


1. Why did the pilots of a second Korean passenger liner, KAL 015, following close behind the ill-fated one, immediately retire after their flight without making any comment?


2. Was the Japanese air control tape of communications with KAL 007 and KAL 015 "falsified" as alleged by some Western experts?


3. Why did Moscow wait so many years before disclosing it had the flight recorder of KAL 007?


4. Why did Japanese air traffic controllers fail to adopt measures to correct the plane's course?


5. Was there a link between the two KAL planes and a U. S. satellite in orbit, plus a U. S. military RC135 electronics intelligence aircraft that was flying in the immediate vicinity of these passenger planes just prior to the shootdown?


6. Why did the United States not warn the off-course airliner?


7. Why did pilots of KAL 007 fail to check their back-up instruments and correct their flight when-both were very experienced pilots?


8. How could it be claimed that the plane's navigational aids were out of order when, according to the Japanese Kyodo news agency, the Korean airliner sent a message to Korea an hour after Soviet interceptor fighters made contact with it?


After the KAL 007 tragedy, Russians, Japanese and Americans sat down together and signed an agreement on flight safety in the North Pacific. If such an action had been taken earlier, those 269 passengers would not have died.


Albert Axcell is an American author and investigative reporter currently living in Moscow.