The Czech military plane Airbus A-319 that planned to transit via Turkmenistan to Afghanistan were not allowed to go through Turkmenistan airspace and had to return home, the Czech news agency CTK said on Friday.
The plane, originally bound for Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, took off from capital Prague at 11:15 a.m. local time on the basis of Turkmenistan's verbal promise to issue a permit for the Czechs to fly over Turkmen territory, CTK said.
However, it returned home and landed at the Prague-Kbely airport shortly before 6 p.m. local time.
There were 39 people aboard the plane, apart from the crew. The passengers include the Afghan patients who underwent treatment in the Czech Republic and were returning home, it added.
There were also Czech soldiers who were returning to the Afghan mission, part of the new contingent of a field hospital and a chemical warfare unit deployed at the Kabul airport, after holiday.
The Czech Foreign Ministry wants to protest through diplomatic channels, according to CTK.
Czech Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalova told CTK that the ministry would ask Turkmenistan for explanation.
"We will protest as according to our information the plane received a verbal promise that it can go ahead," Opletalova said.
However, the Turkmen authorities denied transit via Turkmenistan to the Czech military plane Airbus A-319 flying Czech soldiers and other persons to Afghanistan, which therefore had to return home, Jan Pejsek from the Defense Ministry's Press Department said.
Czech planes had similar problems with Turkmen authorities last year and in 2006.
The most serious was in December 2006 when a Czech plane, with a delegation returning from Afghanistan and including then Czech chief-of-staff Pavel Stefka, was detained at the Ashgabat airport for 14 hours.
At the time, the Turkmen authorities blocked the plane, during its stop-over in Ashgabat, allegedly over the presence of armed bodyguards aboard.
This caused a diplomatic rift between the Czech Republic and Turkmenistan. The plane then reportedly left Ashgabat only on the order of Saparmurat Niyazov, the then authoritarian Turkmen president.
Another problem arose last December when the first 41 Czech members of the field hospital and the chemical unit in Kabul were to depart from Prague to Afghanistan. The departure was delayed due to a lack of Turkmen transit permit.
Source:Xinhua
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