Diplomatic Briefing
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Newsline: France, Britain, Australia and Canada expel Syrian diplomats
France, Britain, Australia and Canada are expelling senior Syrian diplomats, officials said Tuesday, increasing pressure on Damascus after a massacre in which the United Nations says families were shot at close range in their homes. French President Francois Hollande told reporters Tuesday that Ambassador Lamia Shakkour will be notified “today or tomorrow” that she must leave. British officials said Tuesday that the U.K. is expelling three Syrian diplomats in protest at the killings, among them Charge d’Affaires Ghassan Dalla, the country’s top ranking diplomat in London. In Canada, Foreign Minister John Baird said in a statement that the Syrian diplomats and their families have five days to leave Canada. Another Syrian diplomat expected in Canada will be refused entry. In Canberra, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Charge d’Affaires Jawdat Ali, the most senior Syrian diplomat in Australia, is to be expelled along with another diplomat from the Syrian Embassy. He said they were told to leave the country within 72 hours, in response to the massacre in Houla. In Vienna, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nikolaus Lutterotti said the Syrian ambassador is being summoned to the ministry where officials will deliver a very hard protest about the massacre. When asked if the expulsions were EU-wide, Lutterotti said this had not yet been decided. He said the ambassador to Austria would not be expelled as he holds an additional function as the representative to the UN organizations in Vienna. The Syrian ambassador to Britain left the country in March. The United States and Britain have closed their embassies in Syria.
http://wcfcourier.com/news/world/europe/european-nations-australia-expel-syrian-diplomats/article_6ef36bb4-22de-50bb-8aa7-5db147aeaf00.html
Newsline: U.S. Embassy officials among the targets of alleged Iran-linked assassination plots in Azerbaijan
In November, the tide of daily cable traffic to the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan brought a chilling message for Ambassador Matthew Bryza, then the top U.S. diplomat to the small Central Asian country. A plot to kill Americans had been uncovered, the message read, and embassy officials were on the target list. The details, scant at first, became clearer as intelligence agencies from both countries stepped up their probe. The plot had two strands, U.S. officials learned, one involving snipers with silencer-equipped rifles and the other a car bomb, apparently intended to kill embassy employees or members of their families. Both strands could be traced back to the same place, the officials were told: Azerbaijan’s southern neighbor, Iran. The threat, many details of which were never made public, appeared to recede after Azerbaijani authorities rounded up nearly two dozen people in waves of arrests early this year. Precisely who ordered the hits, and why, was never conclusively determined. But U.S. and Middle Eastern officials now see the attempts as part of a broader campaign by Iran-linked operatives to kill foreign diplomats in at least seven countries over a span of 13 months. The targets have included two Saudi officials, a half-dozen Israelis and — in the Azerbaijan case — several Americans, the officials say.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-officials-among-the-targets-of-iran-linked-assassination-plots/2012/05/27/gJQAHlAOvU_story.html
Newsline: Russian diplomat dies in fall in Japan
A Russian diplomat in Japan has died after falling down a cliff while playing volleyball. The Russian embassy in Japan said Vladimir Pushkov, a consul-general aged fifty-five, fell while chasing a ball in the town of Agano in Niigata prefecture. He died of head injuries. Japanese police said he was on a camping holiday with colleagues.
http://rthk.hk/rthk/news/englishnews/20120527/news_20120527_56_843359.htm
Newsline: Freed Russian Bikers Await Visas to Exit Iraq
Four Russian bikers jailed for five days after entering Iraq without valid visas were stranded at the Russian Embassy in Baghdad over the weekend as they waited for paperwork allowing them to leave the country. The bikers obtained fake visas from an organization posing as a travel agency, Russian officials said. The Foreign Ministry said little could be done to secure exit visas for the bikers because all Iraqi government offices were closed on Friday and Saturday, the Iraqi weekend. The Russian Embassy planned to contact the Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Sunday and, if the visas could be obtained in one day, the bikers would return to Russia on Monday. The bikers — Oleg Kapkayev, Alexander Vardanyants, Oleg Maximov and Maxim Ignatyev — entered Iraq from the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region, which they did not need visas to enter, RIA-Novosti reported. After entering Iraq, the bikers were detained in the city of Kirkuk as they headed toward Baghdad. They were released after the Russian Embassy stepped in. The Foreign Ministry negotiated the bikers’ release on Thursday.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/freed-bikers-await-visas-to-exit-iraq/459332.html
Newsline: Iranians protester outside German Embassy
Iran’s official news agency said protesters in front of the German Embassy in Tehran were seeking return of an Iranian-born singer who went into hiding after receiving death threats. Singer Shahin Najafi allegedly insulted a Shiite Muslim saint. The protesters also demanded that Germany apologize for hosting the singer, who has lived in Germany since 2005. They called the singer an apostate. Najafi first contacted German police about the threats May 8. A day later, an anonymous person posting on a Persian-language website put a $100,000 price on his head.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765578611/Iranian-protesters-seek-return-of-local-singer-hiding-in-Germany.html
Newsline: Libyan PM lays wreath at London embassy siege site
Libya’s prime minister placed a wreath at the spot where a London policewoman was killed by gunfire from the Libyan Embassy in 1984. Abdurrahim el-Keib, who placed the wreath of white roses and carnations, has pledged that his country would work closely with the British government in a renewed investigation of the killing. A team of London detectives will be going to Libya to continue their investigation. Policewoman Yvonne Fletcher, 25, was policing a demonstration against Libya’s then-ruler Col. Moammar Gadhafi when an unidentified person sprayed the crowd with bullets, killing her and wounding 10 Libyan demonstrators. No one has ever been charged for the shootings. The incident poisoned relations between Britain and the North African state, leading to an 11-day siege of the embassy and a break in diplomatic relations between London and Tripoli. Fletcher’s killer has yet to be brought to justice, and the fall of Gadhafi’s government after last year’s uprising has reawakened interest in her case.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/25/libyan-pm-lays-wreath-at-london-embassy-siege-site/
Newsline: US Embassy urges Russia to avoid scandal over orphan’s death
The US Embassy in Moscow is trying to prevent a new adoption scandal, following the death of a nine-year-old Russian orphan in Nebraska. Anton Fomin was killed in a fire at the house of his adoptive parents on May 17, prompting renewed calls for a clampdown on the number of US adoptions. The Russian ombudsman for children’s rights urged Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to take the case under his personal control and find out if the adoptive parents are to blame for the accident. The US Embassy has deplored Fomin’s death, stressing that contrary to unsubstantiated reports, the child immigrated to the US with his biological parents, not through inter-country adoption. “The death of the child is a tragedy, and our condolences go out to Anton’s family and community,” the embassy said in a statement. Russian authorities have long been unsatisfied with the ever-growing amount of US adoptions of Russian children – due to the huge number of scandals that have broken involving the mistreatment of Russian children by their adoptive parents. In May 2010, Russia froze all adoptions by foreigners after an adoptive mother from the US put an unaccompanied seven-year-old boy on a one-way flight to Moscow, saying she could no longer handle the stress of raising him. Russia is one of the largest sources of foreign adoptions for US families. About 400 Russian children are currently living in adoptive families in the US.
http://www.rt.com/news/prime-time/russia-orphan-fire-us-030/
Newsline: Iran recalls Azerbaijan ambassador over Eurovision ‘gay parade
The Islamic Republic said it had withdrawn its ambassador from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan that hosts the event on Saturday, “in connection with the insulting of religious saints”. Azerbaijan’s hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest – a flamboyant annual pageant of pop music from around Europe – has been condemned by some Iranian clerics and MPs who have referred to a “gay parade” – although no such event is planned. A senior Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Sobhani, issued a statement urging Muslims in the region to protest what he described as anti-Islamic behaviour by Azerbaijan’s government. “We heard that the government of Azerbaijan is hosting the international Eurovision Song Contest and that during this contest there will also be a gay parade,” the semi-official Fars news agency quoted the cleric as saying. Iran was angered by subsequent anti-Iranian protests in the Azerbaijan capital Baku, where demonstrators carried pictures of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and banners that read “Azerbaijan does not need clerics – homosexuals!”
http://www.iranian.com/main/news/2012/05/22/iran-recalls-azerbaijan-ambassador-over-eurovision-gay-parade
Newsline: Spain says embassy policeman found dead in Yemen
The Interior Ministry say a Spanish policeman stationed at the country’s embassy in Yemen has been found dead with a gunshot to the head. A ministry statement says the death of 38-year-old Antonio Cejudo was being investigated. It would not say if the case was being treated as a suicide. Cejudo had been missing for several days. His body was found in a hard-to-reach mountainous area, and his service revolver was by him. Cejudo had been stationed in Yemen for two years. The alarm was raised when Cejudo failed to arrive in Madrid on Thursday as planned for a few days of vacation.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/22/spain-says-embassy-policeman-found-dead-in-yemen/
Newsline: Iran recalls its envoy in Baku due to ‘insulting of Ayatollah Khamenei’
Official Tehran has recalled its ambassador in Azerbaijan Mohammad Bagher Bahrami. The statement came from Salamnews citing diplomatic sources. As a reason of the withdrawal, the Iranian party says that the participants of the recent protest outside the Iranian embassy in Baku insulted the spiritual leader of the country Ayatollah Khamenei. The ambassador has supposedly been called to Tehran for consultations. A number of protests against the anti-Azerbaijani policy of Tehran and violation of the rights of millions of Azerbaijanis in this country were held outside the Iranian embassy in Baku last week. The photos of the president and the spiritual leader of Iran with critical comments were used during the protest.
http://www.news.az/articles/politics/60736
