World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (February 4, 2011)

The Washington Post ran an article called "India, Iran resolve oil payment dispute." It says that India and Iran have resolved a dispute over how it pays for Iranian crude oil with New Delhi agreeing to set up a new mechanism that will route payments through a German bank. Iran is India's second largest crude oil supplier after Saudi Arabia and meets more than 12 per cent of its oil needs. The decision Thursday to end the deadlock came after many weeks of deliberations between India's finance and oil ministry officials and their counterparts from the external affairs ministry and India's national security establishment.

Another article by the Washington Post on Iran is "Iran's top leader: Mubarak betrayed his people." It analyses Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speech on the events in Egypt. In his speech, Khamenei accused Mubarak of turning Egypt, a close U.S. ally, of doing America's bidding, particularly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel and Mubarak has been a key mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Los Angeles Times reports on the international festival of cinema in Los-Angeles and touches on the Iranian audience.  Though Iranian films are shown in international festivals and have distributions in numerous countries, most are never released in Iran. Rather, they are screened through underground channels and sometimes become available through the black market. Still, the cinema endures. Hamid Naficy, professor of radio-television-film at Northwestern University, believes Iranian cinema has flourished despite numerous roadblocks "because these films stood in sharp contrast to the belligerent rhetoric and the violent politics of the Islamist government."

"Kurds criticize Turkish government's silence on mass graves" says an article by the Turkish information agency Hurriyet. It says that thousands of people marched Wednesday in eastern Turkey to protest what they described as the government's silence on mass graves uncovered in the area last month. Hundreds of vehicles were used to transport people from the surrounding provinces of Van, Diyarbakır, Muş, Batman and Siirt to Bitlis' Mutki district to participate in the march, which was organized by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP, and various nongovernmental organizations. The discovery of the mass graves would be on the top of the agenda had it occurred in any other country in the world, said BDP co-leader Gülten Kışanak. She added that no one should expect Kurds to trust the state unless light is shed on the mass graves and unsolved murders in Turkey.

Hurriyet reports that a child sex scandal allegedly involving a prominent businessman has shocked Armenia. Prosecutors fear that the country risks becoming a hub for international child sex tourism like certain Asian countries unless rapid action is taken to make punishment more rigorous. The Armenian media widely publicized allegations about sex crimes against teenagers by a businessman who until recently was also an adviser to the country's prime minister. Child protection experts in Armenia - a socially conservative Christian country - believe that many paedophile cases go unprosecuted because parents are often reluctant to report sex crimes against children.

"Iran 'monitoring' Egypt protests" is an article by the Iranian information agency Press TV. Iran's Foreign Ministry has hailed the uprising in Egypt as a harbinger of achieving real independence, which will play a critical role in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic also urges maintaining national unity and vigilance against the plots of enemies who seek to sow discord among people. Iran also expects the world's "liberated people and states" to support the nations' demands and condemn the interferences of the US and Israel as well as their attempts of organizing sedition in Egypt.