Baku will be able remove German parliamentarian Albert Weiler from its list of personae non gratae if he submits to the Azerbaijani government a letter of apology with regard to his unauthorized visits to a contested region, spokesman for Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry Hikmet Gadzhiev said on Tuesday.
BAKU (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st August, 2018) Baku will be able remove German parliamentarian Albert Weiler from its list of personae non gratae if he submits to the Azerbaijani government a letter of apology with regard to his unauthorized visits to a contested region, spokesman for Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry Hikmet Gadzhiev said on Tuesday.
Weiler, deputy chairman of German parliamentary group for relations with Southern Caucasus states, was banned from entering Azerbaijan over visiting the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2014 and 2016 without securing Baku's approval. Weiler was set to be part of the German delegation that would accompany German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit to Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan on August 23-25.
"If persons who do not conduct any activity targeting Azerbaijan directly address [the government] with a letter of apology and express their respect for Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and laws, their removal from our list of personae non gratae can be discussed," Gadzhiev said, adding that some people had already been taken off the list.
According to him, Weiler was put on the list, which includes foreign citizens who had visited Nagorno-Karabakh without Baku's permission, in 2014.
"If this person [Weiler] addresses us, we'll be able to examine his case, but we haven't received any appeals of this kind from him yet. This is why there is a ban on his entry to the territory of Azerbaijan," Gadzhiev said.
Earlier in the day, spokesman for the German government Steffen Seibert said that Weiler would accompany Merkel during her trips to Georgia and Armenia, and that Merkel was going to discuss the issue of his entry ban with the Azerbaijani government during her visit to Baku.
Baku has been engaged in a military conflict with the predominantly Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh since 1991, when the region proclaimed its independence from the country.
