Iranian Warships Headed Home Via Suez

TEHRAN - Two Iranian warships that entered the Mediterranean last month, sparking an outcry from Israel, have passed through the Suez Canal back into the Red Sea, naval commander Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayari said March 5.
"The flotilla ... has completed its mission successfully in the Mediterranean Sea and has returned to the Red Sea transiting through the Suez Canal," the official news agency IRNA quoted Sayari as saying.

It was the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution that Iranian warships had entered the Mediterranean, and Israel described the move as a "political provocation."
The frigate Alvand and supply ship Kharg passed through the Suez Canal on Feb. 22 and docked two days later at the Syrian port of Latakia.
Sayari did not say when the warships began their return journey, but said it took them "10-12 hours to transit" the canal. He said the flotilla conveyed a message of "peace and friendship to friendly countries."
Israel, which considers Iran its biggest threat after repeated predictions by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of its demise, put its navy on alert during the flotilla's mission.
Analysts say the deployment was an attempt by Iran to project its clout in the region at a time when anti-government protests sweeping the Arab world from Casablanca to Cairo are shifting the regional balance of power.
The Suez Canal Authority said last month that ships of any nationality can pass through "as long as the country is not in a state of war with Egypt."

N. Korea Wants South to Return Captured Boaters

SEOUL - North Korea on March 5 made a fresh demand for the repatriation of all 31 citizens whose boat drifted into South Korean waters, warning inter-Korean relations would be otherwise seriously affected.
The latest message carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency came a day after the North refused to accept 27 of the 31, insisting that Seoul also hand over four others who want to live in the South.

"The South Korean authorities are forcing the detained guiltless inhabitants to separate from their families by appeasement and pressure," it said in a notice sent to the South on March 5.
"If the South Korean authorities do not comply with [North Korea's] just demand, it will seriously affect the North-South relations and the South side will be held wholly accountable for it," it said.
The North Koreans were on a fishing boat which drifted across the Yellow Sea border in thick fog on Feb. 5.
After almost a month the South said it would hand over 27 but announced that two men and two women would be allowed to stay as they had requested.
In a message late March 4, the North demanded the unconditional repatriation of all 31, according to Seoul's unification ministry, whose officials had been waiting in vain at the border village of Panmunjom to hand over the 27.
A ministry spokesman has said the South would try to contact North Korea again early next week to send the 27 home across the border.
The communist state late March 3 accused the South of "despicable unethical acts" and said the group on the boat had been held hostage in a bid to fuel cross-border confrontation.
Seoul's Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek told parliament the four had been allowed to stay in the South in respect of their wishes.
The four include the 38-year-old boat captain, who apparently feared punishment if sent back and decided to stay when he saw how different life in the South is, the newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.
Relations have been icy since the South accused the North of torpedoing the corvette Cheonan in March 2010 near the disputed Yellow Sea border, killing 46 lives. Pyongyang denies the charge.
In November the North shelled a South Korean island near the border, killing two South Korean Marines and two civilians.