GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – US President Barack Obama’s surprise visit to Afghanistan 1 May has focused world attention on the country itself, but a two-day conference 2-3 May in Geneva is looking at the ramifications of 30 years of war in Afghanistan for refugees in two neighbouring countries. Some 40 international organizations and representatives from 60 countries are attending the conference, where host UNHCR (UN refugee organization) and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran are unveiling their plans for “a joint strategy to find lasting, coherent and unified solutions to the problem of Afghan refugees and internally displaced persons”, according to Didier Burkhalter, head of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), who opened the conference Wednesday.
“Participants will be asked to support programmes in Afghanistan to increase the sustainability of refugee returns. The new strategy also seeks the commitment of the international community to support the host countries of the Afghan refugees. This is the first joint action with humanitarian and development actors and will contribute to the stability of the region,” says Bern in a statement.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan is urging Syrian ally, Iran, to help in an effort to achieve peace,
The joint UN and Arab League appointee on Syria met with Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, Wednesday 11 April in Teheran, saying that Iran could be “part of the solution”. The meeting comes a day before the ceasefire agreement that he brokered is scheduled to go into effect.
Iran is a key regional ally of Syrian President Bashir Al-Assad, as Damascus becomes increasingly isolated internationally in the face of continued violence against government opponents. Opposition forces reported 101 civilian deaths on Tuesday, according to CNN .
Annan said he received assurances that the Syrian government would respect the ceasefire, and that by 06:00 Thursday 12 April, the ceasefire hour, “We should see a much improved situation on the ground”.
Links to other sources: BBC, New York Times, Financial Times, Aljazeera
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Tensions are rising globally over push and shove tactics by Iran and Israel that may involve the US. Two attacks on Israelis Monday 13 February, one in India and the other in Georgia, were blamed by Israel on Iran, while Iran says its staged them to smear its name.
Four people were injured.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by state media Saturday as saying that his country will unveil nuclear “major achievements” in the next few days. He has been sharply criticized in the recent past on suspicion that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and not just the peaceful energy tools the president claims.
“Tensions hit a boiling point weeks ago when Iran conducted military exercises in the Persian Gulf after threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping lane for oil,” reports CNN.
Ahmadinejad’s announcement came during public celebrations of the country’s 1979 revolution which overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Aljazeera reports that “Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, gave a speech at Ahmadinejad’s side vowing that his Islamist movement would continue its ‘resistance’ to Israel.”
Israel is reported to be threatening to attack Iran, a report that the Washington Post met with “The language reflected a deepening rift between Israeli and US officials over the urgency of stopping Iran’s nuclear programme, which Western intelligence officials and nuclear experts say could soon put nuclear weapons within the reach of Iran’s rulers. Although accepting the gravity of the Iranian threat, US officials fear being blindsided by an Israeli strike that could have widespread economic and security implications and might only delay, not end, Iran’s nuclear pursuits.”
Links to other sites: Iran Press TV, Jerusalem Post, NY Times, Times of India
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Britain has reacted sharply to the attack on its embassy in the Iranian capital of Iran Tuesday 29 November, by an angry crowd that police were unable to control. The embassy compound was over-run, including diplomats homes and offices. An emergency meeting of the UK government was called to deal with one of the worst diplomatic crises in recent years between Iran and Britain. The Guardian describes the scene: “The crowd ripped the gilded UK crest off the embassy, pulled down the union flag and replaced it with the Iranian one, and threw satellite dishes off the roofs of embassy buildings. They also smashed windows and scattered thousands of papers in the street in front of the embassy, where British, US and Israeli flags were set alight.”
Aljazeera reports that the crowd was mainly students who called the British Embassy a spy hideout for the US.
The Ottawa Citizen, with reports from the Telegraph and Reuters, writes “Chanting “death to England”, the protesters – many of them organized by a student branch of the pro-regime Basiji militia – burned the British flag and set a car on fire in protest at sanctions imposed last week on Iran’s banking system.”
The situation was under control by 18:00 Tuesday and the UK government says all staff have been accounted for; there were no injuries.
Video, Aljazeera
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Iran Friday 4 November suggested the US is setting the countries on a collision course, as the US and Britain “advance contingency plans”, according to the Guardian, for an attack on Iran, should new fighting break out in the Middle East. Tensions are rising in the US and the UK over Iran’s latest nuclear buildup at a time when Syria is taking a hard line against protesters, while Israeli leaders are talking about a possible attack on Iran. The news dominates some European and Israeli media, but is hardly making waves in the US.
Links to other sources: Guardian, Jerusalem Post
Euronews video
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Livia Leu Agosti, Switzerland’s ambassador to Iran, has told Associated Press that she was never shown any evidence by Iran that a trio of American hikers held captive as spies had strayed across the border into Iran, as its government has claimed.
Switzerland, which represents US interests in Iran, worked for the release of the three. Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer were released in mid-September after serving part of their eight-year prison terms, and Sarah Shourd, who accompanied them, was released a year earlier. Each paid $500,000 in bail.
Update 17:05 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The two US men who were jailed by Iran after hiking in the Iranian border area are reported by the Iranian state news agency to be free and en route home, and AP is reporting that a convoy has left Evin Prison, with Swiss and Omani diplomats and police and possibly the two men.
Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal have been held by Iran since they were arrested in July 2009 while hiking with Sarah Shourd. She was released and sent home on $500,000 bail, and the release of the men is also reportedly for similar bail. The two men were sentenced to eight years in prison for spying.
Switzerland, which represents US affairs in Iran, has been actively involved in negotiations to free the Americans but the Swiss government has remained mum on the affair.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Iran test-fired 14 short-, medium- and long-range missiles Tuesday as part of its Great Prophet 6 military drills, Iran’s English language news agency Mehr says. It quotes Aerospace commander of Islamic Revolution Guard Corps Amir Ali Hajizadeh as saying that Iran’s missiles have the range of 2,000 km and can reach US bases in the region and also Israel, although both of these are well within previous missiles range from Iran.
Links to other sources: Fars news agency, Haaretz, Mehr, Xinhua
An ailing 85-year-old surrounded by her family in a camp for people displaced by floods in Balochistan, Pakistan. The elderly are especially vulnerable to water-borne diseases associated with flooding (photo, ©2011 UNHCR / D Khan, September 2010)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The numbers alone are daunting: 43.7 million displaced persons worldwide, of which 15.4m are refugees, 27.5m are internally displaced refugees and nearly 850,000 are asylum seekers, with one-fifth of asylum seekers in South Africa alone.
The world’s 49 least developed countries hosted some 2 million refugees last year.
Just under 100,000 refugees were admitted for resettlement in 2010, by 22 countries. The United States accounted for 71,000 of these.
The figures are part of the “UNHCR Global Trends 2010″ (2.7 MB pdf) published 20 June to mark World Refugees Day.
The numbers don’t yet include refugees from 2011 conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire, Syria and Libya, among others.
The imbalance in how the world supports refugees, or people who are forcibly displaced, is equally stark and marks this year’s report, says the UN High Commissioner for Refugees agency, based in Geneva: “Pakistan, Iran, and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.1 million, and 1 million respectively. Pakistan also has the biggest economic impact with 710 refugees for each dollar of its per capita GDP (PPP) followed by Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya with 475 and 247 refugees respectively. By comparison Germany, the industrialized country with the largest refugee population (594,000 people), has 17 refugees for each dollar of per capita GDP.”
Click on charts to view larger
Drawn-out wars taking their toll
Roughly one-quarter of the 15.4m refugees are registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. The UNHCR says that of those under its care, 7.2m or about one-third, have been stuck in a refugee situation for more than five years, mainly due to drawn-out wars.
Within view of the Itombwe Massif, a convoy of UNHCR trucks carries Burundian refugees home after years of exile in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (photo, ©2011 UNHCR / M Hofer, December 2010)
The figure is the highest since 2001 and at the same time the lowest number since 1990 have been able to return home, fewer than 200,000.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, comments bluntly that “Fears about supposed floods of refugees in industrialized countries are being vastly overblown or mistakenly conflated with issues of migration. Meanwhile it’s poorer countries that are left having to pick up the burden.”
Some people have been refugees for up to 30 years, with Afghanistan a notable case in point. Afghans were one-third of the world’s refugees in 2001, as they were a decade later, at the start of 2011.
60th anniversary for UNHCR shows dramatic changes
A woman returns to the ruins of her home after violence strikes southern Kyrgyzstan (photo, ©2011 UNHCR / S Schulman, June 2010)
The UNHCR will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its founding in July 2011 and the report notes that the picture today is “of a dratically changed protection environment”. The organization’s early “caseload was 2.1 million Europeans, uprooted by World War Two. Today, UNHCR’s work extends to more than 120 countries and encompasses people forced to flee across borders as well as those in flight within their own countries.”
Two relatively recent developments have been the huge growth in numbers of internally displaced persons and the growing number of stateless persons, or “people lacking the basic safety-net of a nationality”, says the Geneva group, which plans to highlight this group during 2011.
“The number of countries reporting stateless populations has increased steadily since 2004, but differences in definitions and methodologies still prevent reliable measurement of the problem. In 2010, the reported number of stateless people (3.5 million) was nearly half of that in 2009, but mainly due to methodological changes in some countries that supply data. Unofficial estimates put the global number closer to 12 million.”
Actress Angelina Jolie to help tell individual stories for 60th anniversary
The UNHCR’s Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie is helping draw attention to refugees’ stories in a series of videos, including one released 18 June of her visit to Syrian refugees in Turkey. The videos are part of the organization’s efforts to draw attention to refugees by recounting individuals’ stories.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Iranian officials said Tuesday 24 May that the country will take Switzerland to court at the United Nations over what the officials say is a recent decision not to allow Iranian aircraft to refuel in Geneva. The Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (Foca) told GenevaLunch that the Swiss government has not made any such decision. “Yes, it’s correct that Iran’s planes are not being refueled in Geneva”, a Foca spokesperson says, “but it’s because the oil companies will not do it. We are working with Seco (Swiss economic ministry) and the Foreign Affairs Department to find a pragmatic solution.”
The weekly IRNA Tehran-Geneva flight has not been cancelled, but in late April major oil companies began to refuse to fuel the planes, which have stopovers in Eastern and Central European cities. Swiss news agency ATS quotes Geneva Fuelling Services as saying that it has had no business relations with IRNA since April. It and other companies reportedly have refused to refuel the planes because sanctions against Iran are not clear.
Switzerland in January tightened its sanctions against Iran to bring them in line with European Union ones, over Tehran’s nuclear activities.
One Swiss official implied to GenevaLunch that sanctions may not even be the issue, without expanding on the remark.
Geneva international press, briefed by US Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe at UN Thursday
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The UN Human Rights Commission took a step in a new direction late Thursday when the Geneva-based body agreed to establish a special rapporteur for Iran.
This is the first single-country investigation into human rights abuses since the organization was set up in 2006, although Iran has come under review in the context of regular reviews called the Universal Periodic Review, to which all countries are subjected.
The motion passed with less than the majority voting in favour: 22 voted for the resolution, 7 were against and 14 abstained. A significant change from the past was Brazil’s vote in favour.
The US, which submitted the resolution jointly with Sweden, Zambia, the Republic of Moldova, Panama, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. US Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe told journalists afterwards that “today, what we have just witnessed is a seminal moment for this body, the Human Rights Council, with the establishment of a special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran. It is the first new mandate that is country-specific that has been created at the Human Rights Council since the creation of this body in 2006, so it’s a very important moment.”
She pointed out that country-specific actions by the council have generated “a lot of resistance in the past. Today we’ve seen the Council able to respond to a chronic, severe human rights violator which is Iran.”
Links to: UNHRC resolution on Iran 24 March, US Mission, Iran Human Rights
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Tehran Times reports Wednesday evening that Swiss Ambassador Livia Leu Agosti was summoned Tuesday, along with the Saudi Arabian ambassador to hear complaints about US support for Saudi troops going to Bahrain, at the latter’s request.
Switzerland represents US interests in Iran. The ambassador promised to share Iran’s concerns with the US, the newspaper reports.
“The Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that Swiss Ambassador to Teheran Livia Leu Agosti was summoned over the US support for foreign military intervention in Bahrain and ‘baseless’ remarks by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates against Iran during his recent visit to Manama.”
Bahrain’s ruling royal family is Sunni Muslim, as is the Saudi royal family, but the majority of the population in Bahrain is Shi’ite Muslim, as is Iran.
Perceptions about the US role vary from Tehran’s criticism of US support to a Washington Post‘s editorial writer’s view that the Obama administration in the US is not seen as supportive.
US officials at the Pentagon say that Robert Gates, the defense secretary, was not given any warning when he visited Bahrain last week that just two days later Saudi Arabia would send 1,000 troops to the small kingdom to help quell protests, Monday 14 March. Aljazeera reports that the UAE (United Arab Emirates) sent 500 police and that both requests were made to help protect government buildings.
The White House said Monday it does not consider the move an invasion by Saudi Arabia, but it cautioned governments in the region to use restraint.
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are ruled by Sunni Muslim families, and the protesters are Shi’ites. The region has long been marked by taut relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which is ruled by Shi’ite Muslims.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government is increasing sanctions against Iran to the same level as those put in place by its main commercial partners, the government said Wednesday morning 19 January. The tougher measures were taken to ensure that Switzerland is not used by Iran to get around the stricter sanctions put in place by the European Union, in particular, in October 2010.
The list of persons whose assets are frozen is also being extended, the same day that the Swiss have moved to freeze assets of former Tunisian President Ben Ali and Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d’Ivoire, who has refused to give in to pressure from other countries to acknowledge he did not win his country’s recent elections.
Swiss exports to Iran were CHF700 million in 2010, mainly pharmaceuticals, machinery and agricultural products. Imports came to CHF41 million. The volume of trade fell by CHF63 overall, compared to 2009.
The new level of sanctions is also needed to give legal protection to Swiss companies operating internationally, according to Bern, as they now risk being caught between two levels of sanctions.
Ashton, Jalili will meet in Geneva 6-7 December
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, and the European Union’s foreign affairs minister, Catherine Ashton, have agreed to meet in Geneva Monday and Tuesday, 6-7 December, to discuss nuclear issues. It is the first such talk since October 2009. Ashton has the agreement of the E3+3 group, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, for the EU to have nuclear discussions with Iran. Iran insists its nuclear programme is not negotiable.
Links to other sites: Fars News Agency, Iran, Reuters, Xinhua
The West African nation of Gambia has said it is cutting relations with Iran and has given Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country, the foreign ministry announced 23 November. No official reason was given but analysts say the move is linked to a shipment of arms seized in Nigeria last month, which was originally feared destined for separatist movements inside Nigeria. The Nigerian State Security Service later said that shipping documents indicated the arms were destined for Gambia.
Iran has been cultivating ties to African countries to break its international isolation and muster diplomatic assistance for its clandestine nuclear programme, reports the Financial Times. Iranian sources expressed surprise at the move.
Links to other sites: BBC, Tehran Times
Update 14:30 / France’s foreign minister says he has been assured by his Iranian counterpart the Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman whose death sentence by stoning was suspended by authorities, will not be hanged as widely reported earlier today, according to Reuters. Ashtiani’s case has continued to draw international attention. Reports coming out of Iran, notably from German-based International Committee against Stoning, have suggested that the Tabriz prison has been given a green light to hang her Wednesday 3 November. Ashtianti’s supporters insist she was wrongfully accused of adultery as well of involvement in her husband’s murder, and several foreign governments have frequently expressed concern over the case. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refused to take media questions over the case when he attended a UN meeting in the US in September.
The White House in the US issued a statement Tuesday 2 November:
“We condemn in the strongest terms the Government of Iran’s apparent plans to move forward in executing Ms. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. The lack of transparency and due process in Ms. Ashtiani’s case, and the subsequent actions taken against her lawyer and family, are unacceptable. Her case demonstrates the Government of Iran’s fundamental disregard for human rights, including those of women. We call on the Government of Iran to stop this execution, and provide Ms. Ashtiani with the due process and fair treatment she deserves.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has followed the case closely, issued a separate statement saying she is “deeply troubled” by the latest reports. “Ms Ashtiani’s case has not proceeded with the transparency and due process guaranteed under Iranian law, and we are concerned about reports of coerced confessions and other mistreatment. The United States joins the international community in calling for Iran to immediately halt any plans for Ms Ashtiani’s execution and to handle her case with utmost transparency.”
Iran, which regularly lambasts the US for its human rights record, is considered by Amnesty International to be second only to China in the number of executions it carries out annually, followed by Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the US.
Links to other sites: US State Department, The Globe & Mail, Reuters in New York Times, Xinhua
Nigerian police have seized 13 containers in the port of Lagos, Nigeria, believed to contain rocket launchers, missiles and grenades from Iran. The Nigerian secret service, acting on a tip, seized the containers said to contain building materials. No arrests have been made, according to Nigerian police. Israeli media suspect the containers were possibly being shipped to militants in Gaza.
Nigeria has had serious religious strife in the Muslim north of the country, involving a militant fundamentalist group, Boko Haram. Car bombs also went off in the capital Abuja during independence day celebrations 1 October, killing 10 people. A militant group in the Niger Delta region demanding increased revenues from foreign oil companies operating in the area has claimed responsibility. Nigeria fears disruption to its scheduled presidential election next year.
High-ranking officials close to Iran’s nuclear industry have said they are struggling to root out the Stuxnet worm, which was initially discovered in June, according to press reports from Iran 27 September. Some speculate that the real target was not the Bushehr nuclear reactor, where PCs have been infected, but the more sensitive Natanz enrichment centre. Iran has said it is enriching uranium, and would need to enrich it to 90 percent purity to be able to build a bomb.
The Natanz centre has been running at 30 percent of its capacity, according to International Atomic Energy Agency officials, who regularly inspect the installation, according to Haaretz newspaper. Western intelligence agencies are suspected of supplying Iran with defective centrifuges to delay the project.
The Stuxnet worm is the first to target industrial control systems, specifically those made by Germany’s Siemens. This means that the malware could conceivably have switched off systems, turned dials, or disrupted sensitive controls. The worm spreads by inserting itself in a USB drive. A secondary objective of the malware’s makers may have been to analyze its spread, in order to monitor compliance with UN Security Council sanctions on Iran. Infections have been reported in India and Indonesia.
Links to other sites: Haaretz, NPR, Symantec, Washington Post
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey says she is “relieved” at the release of Sarah Shourd from an Iranian prison, the Swiss government announced 14 September.
Swiss diplomats were heavily involved in the negotiations to free the three hikers who Iran says were on Iranian territory near the border with Iraq when they were detained in 2009.
Switzerland represents US interests in Tehran, since the USA has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Sarah Shourd, 32, one of three hikers who were arrested by Iran in July 2009 for spying after they crossed into Iran from Iraq at an unmarked border, has been seen leaving prison, and it’s been confirmed on a web site run by the hikers’ family, that she was headed for the Swiss embassy in Teheran. Shourd was earlier today reported by Iranian public media to have been released. The US State Department told CNN that it could not confirm the information. The Swiss government, which represents American interests in Iran, has maintained its information blackout on the case.
Shourd has a medical condition that was there before her arrest but she has developed a lump in her breast according to her lawyer, and a judge in Teheran told Iranian television that she is being released for medical reasons.
Switzerland reportedly deposited $500,000 in bail for Shourd, according to the Iranian judge handling the case.
Her fiance, Shane Bauer, 28, and Josh Fattal, 28, remain in prison. Iran officials say they have indicted the hikers since investigations were completed recently. US officials say they believe the trio is innocent.
Mark Toner, acting US deputy spokesperson for the State Department, said at a 9 September briefing, when asked about the hikers, “our reaction is that we don’t know, frankly, what Iran is contemplating at this point. We have reached out through the Swiss protecting powers to try to find out more about this. Obviously, if this is—if this turns out to be true, this is terrific news. The hikers’ release is long overdue. And I would just stress that we hope that it’s all three hikers.”
Links to other sites: CNN, hikers’ families site and freethehikers on Facebook
The Associated Press reports that Mahdi Karroubi’s guards had to fire gunshots in the air to clear crowds that broke down the door of his home after days of gatherings outside.
Further details: Associated Press and the Times of India.
The Iranian Embassy in London is reported by the Times to say that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, will not be stoned to death, although it is unclear if Iran still intends to carry out the death penalty given the human rights activist. Ashtiani has spent five years in prison and received 99 lashes for adultery, a crime her family says is a bogus charge. An international campaign to save her has put pressure on Iran to review her case and spare the woman. Another 15 people remain on death row in Iran, sentenced to be stoned to death, reports the Guardian.
Links to other sites: Amnesty International, Guardian, MSNBC
The UN Security Council voted 12-2 for new and tougher sanctions against Iran in an effort to force it to stop its nuclear programme. Turkey and Brazil voted against sanctions and Lebanon abstained. The new, fourth round of sanctions since 2006 brings tighter financial controls and an arms embargo that bans exports of such items as attack helicopters and tanks. Iran has reacted by saying nothing will change as a result. It continues to insist its nuclear activity is peaceful, while other countries fear it is trying to build nuclear weapons.
Links to other sites: BBC, CNN, Ria Novosti, Xinhua
Title: Conference: Iran Confronting 21st Century Challenges
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: Thirty years after its establishment, the Islamic Republic of Iran is confronted with the most serious political crisis in its history. These unseen circumstances have led to a renewed scholarly interest with regards to the challenges that the country is facing at the beginning of the 21st century.
Start Date: 2010-06-18
End Date: 2010-06-19
The five countries with veto power within the UN Security Council have agreed to tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear plans, and what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is calling a “strong” draft resolution is being circulated among the 15 members. Iran agreed just a day earlier, Monday 17 May, to a deal with Turkey that Brazil helped broker, which has it sending most of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for enriched fuel for a research reactor, a deal similar to one suggested by other Western countries in 2009.
The US accused Iran Tuesday of trying to deflect criticism of its nuclear programme. The new, fourth sanctions package is a carrot-and-stick solution to dealing with Iran: it offers tough measures against shipping and banking, and would stop any shipments to Iran of conventional arms, but it also encourages Iran to cooperate with nuclear inspections.
Links to other sites: Aljazeera, BBC, Financial Times, Reuters/New York Times
Clothilde Reiss, the young French woman tried by Iran for taking part in protests after elections in 2009, arrived in Paris Sunday. The student had been confined to the French Embassy in Iran until Iranian authorities ruled she could return home. She was flown home on a French government plane and met with President Sarkozy Sunday 16 May, although French media were quick to point out that he did not appear with her for photos, leaving that job to Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. While Reiss, age 24, thanked the French leader for defending her “innocence”, Sarkozy, for his part, thanked the leaders of Brazil, Senegal and Syria for playing important roles in obtaining her liberation.
Reiss spend 1-1/2 months in Iran’s Evin prison before being moved to the French Embassy for the rest of her sentence.
Switzerland and Spain are two new European members
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland and Spain were voted in as members of the UN Human Rights Council Wednesday, and Libya scooted in as well, one of four candidates for four slots, although it had a relatively low number of votes. But Iran, which had hoped to gain one of four seats up for grabs in the Asia region, failed in its bid. There were five candidates for the four seats. Iran’s election was firmly opposed by the United States.
Link to UNHRC membership page
Iran is issuing visas to the mothers of three US citizens who have been imprisoned since July 2009 when they strayed across the border from Iraq, where they had been hiking, into Iran. The visas are being given on humanitarian grounds, says Iran, to allow the young people’s mothers to visit them, reports Al Jazeera.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The International Olympic Committee has backed Fifa’s (international football federation) decision to bar the Iranian girls’ football team from the Youth Olympic Games if they insist on the right to play wearing Islamic head scarves, the Associated Press reported 7 April. The IOC declared the ban was “in line with the rules of the game” in a statement issued Tuesday 6 April, according to the news agency, which says Iran’s place in the tournament will be taken by Thailand.
Links to other sites: IOC, FIFA, ESPN
