World press on Iran, Iraqi oil, and wreckage of Russian aircraft (May, 10)

The Washington Post reported that in April, Iraq exported more crude than it has in any month since it invaded Kuwait in 1990. This success, according to analysts and policymakers, could jolt the global economy and help offset the loss of oil supplies from Iran. It also signals the rise of Iraq as a modern petro-state, with all the power and problems that enormous oil wealth brings. “Over the next five to seven years, Iraq could be supplying nearly half of the incremental growth in world oil demand,” said Larry Goldstein, director of the nonprofit Energy Policy Research Foundation. The surge in Iraqi exports has influenced the U.S. government as it has evaluated sanctions targeting Iran’s oil sector. One key question has been whether the world’s other oil producers can replace the lost Iranian output; if they couldn’t, the price of oil would probably rise, hurting global economic growth.

The same agency reported that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speeches and interviews during her recent whirlwind, three-day visit to India offer quite a few lessons. Take, for example, her handling of the effort to get India to reduce — if not eliminate — its purchases of crude oil from Iran. The idea, of course, is to strengthen the sanctions against Iran in hopes of preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. India and China have been Iran’s major customers. And India’s appetite for oil will increase 3.2 percent this year, according to the International Energy Agency. Until recently, Iran had been India’s No. 2 supplier, after Saudi Arabia, some 350,000 barrels a day last year, or almost 10 percent of its annual oil needs. But this year India’s refineries cut back on their purchases of oil from Iran, and by 2013 India’s imports from Iran are expected to drop to 7 percent of its needs.

The New York Times published the article headlined “Wreckage of Russian Aircraft Found in Indonesia.” It says that the wreckage of a demonstration airplane for a Russian-made passenger jet that vanished on Wednesday during a 50-minute flight over Indonesia was found on Thursday on the side of a mountain volcano shrouded in mist. There were no signs of survivors among the 50 people, including crew members, journalists and airline representatives, aboard the plane, the Sukhoi Superjet 100, a spokesman for Indonesia’s Search and Rescue National Agency told The Associated Press. In a televised address on Thursday, the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said investigators had been dispatched to the crash site. Analysts said such crashes involving Soviet-era planes were an unfortunate reminder of the reputational hurdles that Sukhoi faces in persuading airlines — a conservative customer base by nature — to take a chance on a Russian-built plane.

The Turkish information agency Hurriyet reported that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki criticised Turkey today for remarks he said did not show "mutual respect", in the latest bout of a weeks-long spat between the two neighbors. Maliki's comments came as Turkey said it would not extradite fugitive Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who is accused of running death squads and is the subject of an Interpol international Red Notice. "We do not have any problems with Turkey," Maliki to according to a statement issued by his office. "We do not want to antagonise Turkey, or Iran, or America, or Saudi Arabia, or any other country, but what happened and the remarks issued by Turkey do not show mutual respect.” His remarks come after Iraq and Turkey last month summoned each other's ambassadors to express their displeasure over a worsening row.