Mahmoud Chahraganly, leader of the National Awakening Movement of Southern Azerbaijan, a group opposed to Persian rule in majority ethnic Azeri parts of Iran, was allegedly deported from Azerbaijan three days earlier, after arriving from Turkey where he was also expelled, AFP reported.

"This is an insult and an unforgivable betrayal," Agry Garadagly, a spokesman for the movement's Baku office, told AFP.

Several opposition newspapers reported that Chahraganly had been "deported" by authorities in Azerbaijan while other newspapers said that the Iranian dissident had "departed" from Azerbaijan under unclear circumstances immediately after arriving there from Turkey.

Although strategically-located Azerbaijan has good relations with the United States, it also sits on Iran's northern border and is anxious to maintain friendly ties with Tehran as well.

Authorities in Baku admitted that Chahraganly had left Azerbaijan but denied he had been forced out.

"This is a very sensitive issue and it needs to be addressed delicately," Ali Akhmedov, the executive secretary of Azerbaijan's ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party, told AFP.

"The official version is that Chahraganly wanted to leave for the US with his family of his own accord," he added.

The opposition Popular Front party, strongly opposed to the rule of President Ilham Aliyev, condemned the alleged expulsion of Chahraganly, saying it was an indicator of Baku's disregard for the fate of Azeris in Iran.

"These events have shown that despite promises the head of state made to defend the rights of all Azeris, today thousands of Azeris are subject to violent pressure," the party said in a statement.

Garadagly, who said he was with Chahraganly when he was detained in Baku, described how the Iranian dissident leader was forced into a vehicle by armed, plain-clothed Azerbaijani security officers who spirited him off to the airport where he was put on flight to the United States.

The controversy over the ethnic-Azeri leader comes just weeks after Iranian authorities put down protests in the country's East Azerbaijan province that erupted after a racist cartoon was printed in a local newspaper.

Up to 26 million Iranians are ethnic Azeri, dwarfing the ethnic Azeri population of Azerbaijan itself, which numbers around eight million people. Azeris speak a language close to Turkish, but as Shiite Muslims they also share a religion with Iran's Farsi population.

Garadagly said Azerbaijani authorities deported Chahraganly under pressure from Iran, which borders Azerbaijan to the south and supplies an Azerbaijani exclave with natural gas.

Iranian officials have blamed the West for stoking tensions between Iran's Farsi and Turkic-speaking populations.

Relations between Baku and Tehran have not always been smooth because Azerbaijan receives military aid from the United States, while hosting scores of Western oil companies developing its Caspian Sea oil deposits.

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