The United States is sending two investigators to London to interview an EgyptAir pilot who says he has information about the crash of Flight 990 into the Atlantic last year.

The agents from the National Transportation Safety Board will speak to the Egyptair pilot, Hamdi Hanafi Taha, who flew a passenger plane into London last Friday and then requested asylum in the UK.

EgyptAir's Flight 990 crashed less than an hour after taking off from New York on 31 October, killing all 217 people on board.

Mr Taha, 49, told air traffic controllers before landing at London's Heathrow airport that he wanted "to stop all lies about the disaster".

EgyptAir vice president for operations, Hassan Musharafa, said Mr Taha was "one of 500 EgyptAir pilots and had no access to information about the crash".

Criminal matter

The NTSB in November considered handing leadership of the probe over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation because of the signs that a crew member may have deliberately downed the plane, making the crash a criminal matter.

But the agency backed off after high-level Egyptian government protests. Egyptian officials say they believe that a problem in the plane's tail section was responsible for the crash.

The Egyptian ambassador to London, Adel el-Gazzar, has said there is no question of trying to extradite Mr Taha back to Egypt, because he is not guilty of any crime under Egyptian law.

Mr Gazzar, who is in Cairo to brief Foreign Minister Amr Mussa, said that Egypt "was following the investigation" by the British authorities into the pilot's case.

"The British authorities have co-operated fully with us," he said.