Tasnim – The United States has denied entry to former secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization because of his visit to Iran, which the US president has put in his blacklist, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.


According to the report, Javier Solana, a former Spanish foreign minister and ex-secretary general of NATO has been refused US visa by an electronic authorization system because of his recent trip to Iran.

Solana was scheduled to give a speech to the Brookings Institution, an American research group in Washington, DC.

According to the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP), citizens of 38 countries can travel to the United States for tourism, business, or while in transit for up to 90 days without having to obtain a visa.

However, if citizens of the VWP countries travel to one of the seven countries covered by new eligibility requirements (Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen), they will have to apply for a new Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) permission before travelling to the US.

The seven countries are included in the blacklist of US President Donald Trump for the alleged financing of international terrorism.

El Pais quoted sources at the US embassy in Madrid as saying that ESTA automatically rejects the requests of people who have visited any of the seven countries affected by Trump’s travel ban order.