Iran: Merkel's pilot responsible for airspace incident

May 31, 2011, 17:57 GMT

Hamburg/Berlin - Iran's ambassador to Germany in interview remarks to be published on Wednesday said that an error on the part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's pilot was the cause of the incident of her plane being barred from Iranian airspace early Tuesday.

In an interview with the Hamburg-based Financial Times Deutschland, ambassador Ali Reza Sheikh Attar - who on Tuesday was summoned to the German Foreign Ministry over the incident - spoke of a 'technical problem' and human error in the incident.

'It was a mistake by the pilot. He had entered a code for the return, and not for the entry, into the airspace,' the ambassador said.

Attar said it was a purely technical problem which he personally could have resolved within 20 minutes.

'We shouldn't politicize something like this,' he added to the newspaper, saying the incident all boiled down to human error.

Attar said he did not expect Germany to apologize for its accusations levelled against Iran.

'But there should be clarification that this was only a technical problem,' he said, adding that Iran had been 'very surprised' about Germany's accusations.

On Tuesday, Attar had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin over the incident, in which Merkel arrived two hours late on an official trip to India after her plane was forced to circle over Turkey for two hours when it was denied entry to Iran's airspace.

During a meeting with Attar, Ministry Secretary of State Wolf-Ruthart Born emphasized that Merkel's plane had been given prior permission to enter Iranian airspace and that the refusal was therefore an 'unprecedented event' which 'breached international conventions.'

Born had conveyed the German government's expectation that such an incident would not happen again, the Foreign Ministry said. Attar had reassured him that he would 'inform his government about Germany's position immediately,' the ministry said.

Merkel's plane was later allowed to pass through while a second plane carrying other government ministers and secretaries of state to the Indian capital New Delhi was allowed through with no delay.

'I've never experienced anything like it,' the chancellor said. 'Neither had the pilots.'

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, currently visiting Australia, said Iran's actions showed a 'disrespect towards Germany, which we cannot accept.'

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