Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry announced on Thursday that it has declared four employees of Iran’s embassy in Baku persona non grata, as tensions between the two neighboring countries continue to escalate.
In a statement, the ministry said that it had summoned Iran’s ambassador, Abbas Mousavi, and informed him that the four individuals had been declared persona non grata “due to their activities that are incompatible with diplomatic status and contradict the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”
The ministry added that the four embassy staff have been given 48 hours to leave Azerbaijan.
During the meeting with Iran’s ambassador, Azeri officials expressed “strong dissatisfaction” over what they called “recent provocative actions” by Iran, according to the statement.
Earlier on Thursday, Azerbaijan had announced the arrest of six Azeri nationals who were allegedly linked to Tehran and were accused of plotting a coup in the country.
A joint statement by the interior ministry, state security service and prosecutor-general’s office said the six men were “recruited by Iranian secret services to destabilize the situation in the country.”
The statement went on to say that these individuals were plotting to “set up a ‘resistance squad’ aimed at establishing a Sharia state in Azerbaijan through armed unrest and violent overthrow of Azerbaijan’s constitutional order.”
The two countries, which share a border of approximately 700 kilometers (430 miles), have a complex relationship that has been marked by tension for some time now. However, tensions intensified in January following an armed attack on Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran, which resulted in the death of an Azerbaijani security official and left two others wounded.
While Iranian authorities attributed the attack to “personal and family problems” of the Iranian assailant who was subsequently arrested, Azerbaijan blamed Iran for the attack, with a spokesman from Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry saying that the attack was “encouraged” by an anti-Azerbaijani campaign in Iranian media.
Iran has expressed concerns over Azerbaijan’s relations with Israel, a major arms supplier to Baku. Tehran is also wary over nationalists in Azerbaijan and its close ally Turkey fanning separatist tendencies among its sizeable ethnic Azeri population.
Azeris constitute the largest minority group in Iran, with millions of them residing in a region in northwestern Iran that shares the same name as the independent state of Azerbaijan.
Source: alarabiya
