World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (December 13, 2011)

The Washington Post reported that The Obama administration has delivered a formal request to Iran for the return of a U.S. surveillance drone captured by Iranian armed forces, but said it is not hopeful that Iran will comply. President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. “We have asked for it back. We’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday. In an interview broadcast live Monday night on Venezuelan state television, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing to suggest his country would grant the U.S. request. Speaking through an interpreter, Ahmadinejad said: “There are people here who have been able to control this spy plane, who can surely analyze this plane’s system also. ... In any case, now we have this spy plane.”

The Los Angeles Times cjntinued the theme and published the article headlined “U.S. asks Iran to return spy drone.” It says that Capture of the futuristic-looking unmanned spy plane has provided Tehran with a propaganda windfall. The government announced that it planned to clone and mass produce the bat-winged craft for use against its enemies. The embarrassing loss of the CIA drone has focused attention on the use of an air base in western Afghanistan over the last several years to launch aerial surveillance missions against suspected nuclear facilities and other targets in neighboring Iran. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta called the U.S. request for return of the drone "appropriate," but he acknowledged that Iran's government, which last week lodged a formal complaint with the United Nations about the U.S. spy plane violating its airspace, was unlikely to send it back.

“Turkey atop of list on rights violations in EU” is an article published by the Turkish information agency Hurriyet. It says that Turkey led all of Europe in terms of the number of cases at the European Court of Human Rights that were related to violations of rights between 1959 and 2010, according to recent numbers released by the court.  The most violated right in Turkey is the right to be judged fairly, according to the statistics. In the 1990s, 90 percent of the cases against Turkey were opened because of the country’s alleged violations of the right to life and the prohibition against torture; now, however, the country is most often charged due to long periods of imprisonment without conviction and violations of the right to a fair trial. Turkey has been ordered to pay compensation in 2,245 out of 2,753 cases related to the infringement.

The same information agency reported that Russia's foreign minister has rebuffed calls on Moscow to back sanctions against Syria, saying that ultimatums won't help end the crisis. Sergey Lavrov also slammed the West for taking an "immoral" stance on Syria by raising the pressure on President Bashar Assad's government while turning a blind eye to violent action by militants. Lavrov said at Tuesday's news conference following his talks with Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci that Moscow has advised Syria to accept Arab League observers as quickly as possible. He said that observers from Russia, Brazil, India and China may also join the Arab League monitors. Russia has staunchly resisted a Western push for sanctions on Assad's regime over its violent crackdown on protests.