Madrid - Spain's conservative opposition was under pressure Tuesday for wrongly identifying 30 of the 75 victims in the worst air crash in the history of Spanish peacekeeping missions.

Critics were calling on then conservative defence minister Federico Trillo to assume his responsibilities while a trial of the three military officers who had overseen the identification of the bodies was drawing to a close.

The Russian-made Yak-42 plane crashed into a mountainous area in north-western Turkey as it was bringing peacekeepers home from Afghanistan in May 2003. The 62 soldiers and 13 Ukrainian and Belorussian crew were killed.

Some of the victims' families were given the wrong bodies, which were exhumed later for a correct identification.

A month-long trial of three military officers was ending Tuesday, with prosecutors seeking prison terms of up to five years for them.

Prosecutors said Vicente Navarro, a general responsible for health matters, had deliberately assigned random names to the remains of 30 victims because he was under pressure from the government to repatriate the bodies in time for a state funeral a few days later.

Navarro's defence blamed the mistakes on the Turkish authorities.

Lawyers representing the victims' families described Navarro and the two others as the "executors" of an offence which was ordered at a higher level.

Then conservative prime minister Jose Maria Aznar and his defence minister Trillo, however, were not called as witnesses at the trial.

Conservative leader Mariano Rajoy said Trillo had a "good conscience," but Elena Valenciano of the governing Socialist Party urged the conservatives to assume their "political and moral responsibilities" in the case.

The air crash raised questions about the security of eastern European-made military aircraft and weakened the Aznar government. (dpa)