Azerbaijan on Monday rejected as "slander" Iranian claims that Baku has been collaborating with Israel's spy services and helping assassins who have killed Iranian nuclear scientists.
Azerbaijan
on
Monday rejected as "slander" Iranian claims that
Baku
has
been collaborating with
Israel
's spy
services and helping assassins who have killed Iranian nuclear scientists.
The Azerbaijani foreign ministry condemned a protest note given to its
ambassador in
Tehran
which
complained about the alleged collaboration. The note demanded that
Baku
prevent Mossad from carrying out anti-Iranian "activities" on its
soil.
"This Iranian note is slander," foreign ministry spokesman Elman
Abdullayev told AFP.
He described the Iranian complaint as a reaction to a formal protest last month
from
Baku
to
Tehran
after
two men with alleged links to Iranian intelligence were arrested on suspicion
of plotting to kill prominent Israelis in neighbouring
Azerbaijan
.
"It is a response note to an Azerbaijani note which was about Iranian
security services' attempted terrorist attack against two Israeli citizens in
Baku
,"
he said.
The Iranian foreign ministry on Sunday accused mainly Muslim neighbour
Azerbaijan
of
giving logistical assistance to alleged assassins.
"Some of the terrorists linked to the assassination of Iranian nuclear
scientists have travelled to
Azerbaijan
... [where
they are] facilitated to travel to Tel Aviv," the official IRNA news
agency website said, quoting the ministry.
Energy-rich
Azerbaijan
has a
secular government which maintains a friendly relationship with
Israel
based
on the export of oil and the import of weapons and military technology.
But its relationship with
Iran
has
deteriorated in recent months amid the arrests of the alleged plotters in
January and accusations that
Tehran
has
been sponsoring Islamic radicals in
Azerbaijan
.
Relations between the ex-Soviet state and the Islamic republic are complicated by
the presence of a huge ethnic Azeri minority in
Iran
,
which far outnumbers
Azerbaijan
's own
population of 9.2 million.
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