Iran briefly closed its airspace to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plane as she flew to India for a visit yesterday, delaying her arrival and sparking a diplomatic row.
Mrs Merkel was held up as she flew overnight on Monday-Tuesday for a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pratibha Patil in New Delhi.
“Hindering the German chancellor’s passage over Iran is absolutely unacceptable. It shows a lack of respect towards Germany that we will not accept,” Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement.
He summoned the Iranian ambassador in Berlin to “make it very plain that such a breach of international conventions will in no way be tolerated by Germany”.
The reasons for the delay were not immediately known and a second plane with four of Mrs Merkel’s ministers and other delegation members was not held up.
Mrs Merkel, speaking at a news conference with Mr Singh, declined to go into detail about the inconvenience, which saw her plane circle for two hours over Turkey before receiving permission to cross Iran.