Baku frees Iranian truck drivers as ties thaw with Tehran

Baku frees Iranian truck drivers as ties thaw with Tehran
The move marks a thaw between Azerbaijan and Iran a week after their foreign ministers agreed to resolve a crisis in ties through dialogue.
2 min read
Azerbaijan's customs department said Thursday it had handed over the drivers to the Iranian side. [Getty]

Azerbaijan released Thursday two Iranian truck drivers whose arrest last month on charges of illegally crossing into the country strained ties between Baku and Tehran.

The move marks a thaw between Azerbaijan and Iran a week after their foreign ministers agreed to resolve a crisis in ties through dialogue.

Azerbaijan's customs department said Thursday it had handed over the drivers to the Iranian side in a decision "guided by principles of humanitarianism, mutual respect and good neighbourliness".

The standoff between the countries was sparked by allegations from Tehran that its sworn enemy Israel maintained a military presence in Azerbaijan. Baku denied the claims.

Iran vowed to take any necessary action and staged military drills near its border with Azerbaijan.

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Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov spoke last week by phone with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and the pair agreed to resolve differences through dialogue.

Israel is a major arms supplier to Azerbaijan, which late last year won a six-week war with neighbour Armenia for control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Azerbaijan and Iran have long been at loggerheads over Tehran's backing of Armenia in the decades-long Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The war last year ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire that saw Armenia cede swathes of territory -- including a section of Azerbaijan's 700-kilometre (430-mile) border with Iran.

Baku said the drivers entered Azerbaijan through that territory, bypassing border control to avoid customs duties it had imposed recently -- to Iran's fury -- on cargo transit to Armenia.

Tehran has long been wary of separatist sentiment among its ethnic Azeri minority, who make up around 10 million of Iran's 83 million population.

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