World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (December 2, 2011)

The Washington Post reported that Vice President Joe Biden called on Turkey to impose new sanctions against Iran, while praising Ankara for its role in pressuring Syria to stop its bloody crackdown on protesters. A top U.N. human right official warned Thursday that Syria has entered a state of civil war with more than 4,000 people dead and an increasing number of soldiers defecting from the army to fight President Bashar Assad’s regime. Turkey announced a set of economic sanctions against Syria earlier this week, as Assad continues with his attempts to crush an 8-month-old revolt against his autocratic rule.

The same agency published the article headlined “Europeans stiffen sanctions on Iran after embassy attack.” It says that European nations, angered by a mob attack on the British Embassy in Tehran, stiffened their sanctions against Iran on Thursday but stopped short of halting oil purchases from the increasingly isolated Islamic government. The new sanctions targeted additional members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and businesses controlled by its members, according to an announcement after a European Union foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels. In addition, the E.U. banned doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line.

“Can Russia Help Us Withdraw From Afghanistan?” is an article published by The New York Times. It says that critics may worry that relying on the northern routes to supply our troops in Afghanistan and withdraw them as we reduce our presence there will make the United States overly dependent on Russia. But because of Afghanistan’s location, we have no choice but to depend on others for access to its territory. The choice is between Pakistan on one hand, and Russia and Central Asian nations on the other. And Russia, unlike Pakistan, has not hosted militants who are killing Americans on the battlefield.

Another article published by the same information agency is devoted to coming presidential elections in Russia. The article says that with parliamentary elections only days away that are expected to reflect dwindling public support for Vladimir V. Putin’s party, Russian prosecutors have opened a case against the country’s only independent election monitoring organization. The organization, Golos, has already posted reports of more than 4,500 violations of election law in the prelude to the voting on Sunday. Golos receives financing from Western governments, including the United States, and some Russian officials have suggested that the organization’s real aim is to incite an Arab Spring-type revolution in Russia. Though every election monitoring mission has come under pressure from government officials, “it has never been so high in my memory,” G. Melkonyants, the deputy director of Golossaid, adding that he could not blame Golos’s partners for keeping their distance now. “There is no need to say that they are cowards,” he said. “Believe me, all of us — including the political parties — we’re all in a situation that is not simple, not simple at all.”

The Turkish information agency Hurriyet Daily News published the article subtitled “Russia intervenes in S Ossetian unrest.” It says that A senior Kremlin official held talks in the rebel Georgian region of South Ossetia yesterday as Russia tried to defuse a political crisis sparked by the invalidation of presidential polls.  Russian presidential administration official Sergei Vinokurov met with the presidential candidate Alla Dzhioyeva whose apparent victory over a Kremlin-backed rival was annulled due to alleged violations. Dzhioyeva also barred from participating in the new vote. Dzhioyeva also appealed to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for support, warning that the region was on the brink of “civil war.”