briefs

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – First lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner appeared to win a… BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – First lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner appeared to win a sweeping victory Sunday to become Argentina’s first elected woman president, according to exit polls and early official results.

Fernandez, 54, a long-time federal senator and wife of President Nestor Kirchner, was leading her closest rival, former congresswoman Elisa Carrio, by about 20 points, exit polls indicated.

That margin, if confirmed by final official results, would be sufficient to avoid a runoff election next month.

Fernandez’s election marks an unusual and possibly unprecedented transfer of power between spouses in a democracy.

The margin of victory, Fernandez said, would possibly be the greatest of any presidential election here since democracy was restored in Argentina almost a quarter a century ago, after six years of military rule. Most analysts credited her victory to coattails from her husband’s successful economic policies.

Unlike Bachelet’s highly contested election, however, Fernandez’s gender was hardly an issue in a low-key campaign that Fernandez led from the outset, riding her husband’s popularity. – Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON – Confronted by mounting U.S. and U.N. pressure, Iran has been steadily shifting its trade from West to East and, with the benefit of record high oil prices, is likely to be able to withstand the new U.S. sanctions, according to U.S., European and Iranian analysts.

China, a permanent member of the Security Council that can veto any U.N. resolution, is expected to overtake Germany as Iran’s biggest trading partner this year. Germany and other European countries had consistently been Iran’s largest trading partners for more than a decade, according to the Iran Investment Monthly.

The U.S. Treasury said that more than 40 banks, mostly in Europe, have curbed business with Iran as a result of U.S. pressure, but smaller banks, Islamic financial institutions and Asian banks are likely to step in and replace the Western financial institutions through which Iran has long sold oil on the international market. Oil traders said that Iran does an increasing portion of its petroleum sales in euros and yen, instead of U.S. dollars, and often through third parties, to help its customers circumvent U.S. financial sanctions.

“Given particularly the price and demand for oil, Iran clearly has leverage with countries that need Iran’s oil,” said Shaul Bakhash, a George Mason University historian and author of “The Reign of the Ayatollahs.”

Nonetheless, U.S. efforts to exert financial pressure on Iran were having some impact, even before the new measures taken last week against firms linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. – Steven Mufson and Robin Wright, The Washington Post

TEHRAN, Iran – Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki, at a news conference with his Turkish counterpart Sunday, accused the United States of backing Kurdish separatists waging warfare against Turkey and Iran.

Both Ankara and Tehran have been fighting autonomy-minded Kurdish guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, and the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, PEJAK, holed up in the mountains of northern Iraq. Turkey has amassed troops near the Iraqi border and threatened to launch a ground invasion into the Iraqi Kurdistan to avenge the killing and capture of Turkish troops in cross-border clashes in recent weeks.

Sunday, a Turkish military operation in eastern Iraq resulted in the deaths of at least 15 militants, according to the private Dogan news agency.

“The patience of the Turkish government, parliament and nation has come to its end,” said Turkish foreign minister Ali Babacan at the news conference here. Babacan thanked the Tehran government for its support but said he did not subscribe to the theory that Americans were backing the Kurdish rebels.

Mottaki called PKK, PEJAK and the Mujahedin Khalq Organization, or MKO, terrorist groups and suggested the United States was supporting them. Iran accuses the United States of backing separatist ethnic and religious groups fighting the Tehran government in a bid to pressure Iran to slow or halt its nuclear research program and end support for militant Islamic groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine.

“I’m very worried about this,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “This could be an expansion of a front of a nightmare situation we’re already involved in.”

Economic, military and diplomatic ties between secular, pro-U.S. Turkey, a member of NATO, and the Islamic Republic of Iran have blossomed in recent decades despite the country’s radically different relations with Washington. While the United States considers Iran an enemy, annual trade between Iran and Turkey exceeds $4 billion. – Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times