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A major Nepalese airline has had to apologise and remove an advertisement which featured a photograph of Peru.

Royal Nepal Airlines, the country's flagship carrier, distributed a poster which unintentionally featured a photograph of Machu Picchu with the slogan: 'Have you seen Nepal?'

A Peruvian man noticed the poster during a holiday in India, leading to Peru's authorities requesting an explanation from the Nepal embassy.

The mountain temples in the Himalayas can be mistaken for Incan ruins by the untrained eye, but the Nepalese airline should have known better and the country's foreign ministry issued an official apology.

'The airline... offered apologies to Peru for using the picture of the Machu Picchu Sanctuary on a poster to promote their country and assured that the lamentable error has been corrected,' the foreign ministry told Reuters.

'As a consequence, the Nepalese airline fired an employee in the rank of a manager... It is concluded that it was an isolated error.'

Peru's government is urging tourists and residents to vote for the Andean Machu Picchu site to be named as one of the new Seven Wonders of the World.

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