World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (December 10-12, 2011)

The Washington Post reported that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended the launch of a new nuclear power reactor Monday, calling it part of a “renaissance” of atomic energy. The new 1,000 megawatt reactor is the fourth unit at the Kalininskaya nuclear power plant in Udomlya, some 300 kilometers (about 180 miles) north of Moscow. Construction began before the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and was restarted in 2007. Earlier this year Atomstroiexport, a Rosatom subsidiary, launched Iran’s first nuclear reactor in Bushehr, and is expected to start new reactors in India next year. Russian officials have insisted that the deal with Iran is in line with international agreements and will oblige Tehran to ship all the spent fuel from the plant back to Russia for reprocessing to avoid a possibility of it being used in a covert weapons program.

The same agency published the article headlined “Iran claims its experts almost done recovering data from captured US drone.” It says that Iranian experts are in the final stages of recovering data from the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country’s armed forces, state TV reported Monday. Tehran has flaunted the drone’s capture as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle. Lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, who is on the parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, said Monday the extracted information will be used to file a lawsuit against the United States for the “invasion” by the unmanned aircraft. Sorouri also claimed that Iran has the capability to reproduce the drone through reverse engineering, but he didn’t elaborate.

“Iran Complains to Security Council About Spy Drone” is an article published by The New York Times on Saturday. It says that Iran said Friday that it had formally complained to the United Nations Security Council about what it called the hostile and aggressive behavior of the United States in sending a sophisticated radar-evading spy drone over Iranian territory, one that Iran’s military said it had intercepted and captured last weekend. The complaint, which appeared to have been made more for its propaganda value than for any Iranian hope of Security Council action, was announced a day after Iran showcased what it described as the captured drone on national television, as if it were a war trophy. Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were shown displaying a bat-winged aircraft on a platform bedecked with anti-American slogans and a mock American flag with skulls instead of stars.

The Turkish information agency reported that the European Union’s description of Turkish protest against Greek Cyprus term presidency in the second half of 2012 as a “threat” was strongly rebuffed by Ankara who advised the 27-member union to deal with the problem it created. “We would like to recall that the situation surrounding the Presidency of the EU in the second half of 2012 results from political miscalculation and mistake made with regard to the 2004 enlargement,” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said at the weekend in a statement in criticism of the EU Council Conclusions. The EU asked Turkey to fully respect the Presidency as an institution after Ankara announced it will suspend its ties with the EU during Greek Cyprus’ presidency.  Turkey retains its sincere desire for a comprehensive settlement in Cyprus in the coming months, the statement said.