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Swiss stop refueling Iran Air jets

22 May 2011 04:25 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) of Switzerland says the planes of Iran’s state-owned airline will not be allowed to refuel at the Geneva airport, APA reports quoting Press TV.

â€œThe weekly Tehran-Geneva flights have not been cancelled but Iran Air should get fuel from other countries such as Serbia,â€ FOCA spokesman Anton Kohler said on Friday, IRNA reported.

The Geneva Fuelling Services Company, which is responsible for supplying fuel for Geneva airport, confirmed the report, saying that it has had no trade relations with Iran Air since late April.

However, FOCA said that the company was consulting with Switzerland’s Foreign Affairs Ministry and State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) to find a â€œpragmatic solutionâ€ to improve the situation.

FOCA is responsible for aviation development and the supervision of civil aviation activities in Switzerland.

Earlier in April, Iran Air’s Paris branch manager, Behrouz Raeesi, criticized several European Union countries for refusing to supply Iranian passenger planes with fuel, saying that their refusal to refuel Europe-bound Iranian commercial planes was illegal since it could have an impact on passenger safety.

He also stated that Tehran would take action if certain European countries continued to refuse to provide fuel for Iranian aircraft under US pressure.

Iranian passenger planes en route to Europe make stopovers at airports in Belgrade and Budapest.

Iran has also stopped refueling some Western passenger planes landing in the Islamic Republic in retaliation for the measures taken against the country.

Seven months ago, BP, Shell, and a number of other oil companies said that they would no longer refuel Iranian planes due to the unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran.

France’s Total and Austria’s OMV followed suit in March due to pressure from the United States.