Cyprus hopes US extradition not sour relations with Iran

The Cyprus government on Friday said it hoped a recent extradition of an Iranian man to the United States does not cause tense relations with Iran. Government spokesperson Christos Stylianides, while confirming Iran had recalled its ambassador for consultations following the extradition, said Cyprus looks forward to defusing the situation through diplomatic consultations. "We hope that the situation will smooth out through diplomatic means. Cyprus does not wish this incident to lead to the creation of tense relations with Iran," Stylianides said. A police source told Xinhua the Iranian man was handed to the United States on the strength of a court decision in an extradition procedure. Evidence presented to the court alleged that the man had bought and delivered to Iran material which comes under the provision of an embargo of arms imposed on Iran by the U.N. Security Council. Cyprus Foreign Minister Ioannis Kassoulides, in Washington for a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday, told an audience at the Brookings Institution that he could not understand Iran's reaction. He also implied that the Cypriot government had resisted political pressure by Iran to prevent the extradition. "In Cyprus we follow, as a rule, the decisions of the courts," Kasoulides said. Cyprus, situated at the strategic far eastern Levantine basin of the Mediterranean, traditionally has good relations with countries of the Middle East, including all Arab countries and Israel. It recently jailed for four years a Lebanese Hesbollah man who was found guilty on charges of conspiring to carry out attacks on Israeli tourists in Cyprus by collecting information of plane arrivals and tourist buses itineraries. Earlier in 2009, Cypriot authorities confiscated a shipment of Iranian explosives and munitions from a Russian vessel destined for Syria as being in violation of the arms embargo on Iran.