Merkel arrives late as Iran blocks plane

Iran briefly closed its airspace to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plane as she flew to India for a one-day visit, delaying her arrival by several hours. Her plane was forced to circle for two hours over Turkey before receiving permission to cross Iran.

She landed safely and held consultations with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and her team also signed a  clutch of memoranda of understanding on research in nuclear physics, vocational education, science and technology, and health.

“I’m very glad I arrived here safely in India,” Merkel said at a joint press conference jointly held with Singh.

“We have never experienced anything like this before,” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Siebert said.

Germany, along with the United States and other Western powers, has been critical of Iran over its nuclear programme. The European Union (EU) last week extended its sanctions against Iran at the lack of progress in nuclear talks.

Iran’s irritation could have been due to the impasse over payment of oil sales worth about $12 billion a year. Earlier this year, Germany allowed India to pay for the oil via Hamburg-based EIH bank that handles international trade for Iranian companies. But India halted that conduit in April after discussions with Merkel, and EIH has since been put under EU sanctions. A team of Iranian officials was negotiating with the finance ministry as Merkel landed.

On her second visit to India since 2007, Merkel seeks to increase volumes of trade. Germany is India’s largest trading partner in Europe, with bilateral trade on track to rise to euro 20 billion by 2012 from euro 15.4 billion in 2010. She is also here to make a strong pitch on behalf of Eurofighter Typhoon, built by Germany-led four-nation consortium, EADS Cassidian, for a multi-billion-dollar deal to supply 126 fighter jets to India. Typhoon is competing with French Made Rafale for the deal.

“We are convinced that we have the best product on offer, as our competitors are too. We will certainly not exert any kind of influence on this process. We wish this to be a very transparent process and a smooth one,” Merkel said.

Germany also has a big stake in the success of the free trade deal between India and EU, which both sides say will unlock billions of dollars of new export opportunities.

“We discussed the developments in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Terrorism is a serious challenge, which will have to be fought on all fronts and not selectively,” Singh said at the conference.