VILNIUS (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested Russia’s elections were neither free nor fair as she made a broad plea on Tuesday for digital freedoms at a European security gathering.

Speaking to ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, she accused Belarus of “unremitting persecution” of its opposition and suggested Ukraine prosecuted former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko for political reasons.

For a second day, Clinton cited “serious concerns” about Sunday’s election in Russia in which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s parliamentary majority was cut in an vote marred by accusations of ballot-stuffing and other irregularities.

“When authorities fail to prosecute those who attack people for exercising their rights or exposing abuses, they subvert justice and undermine the people’s confidence in their governments,” Clinton said in a speech at the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

“As we have seen in many places, and most recently in the Duma elections in Russia, elections that are neither free nor fair have the same effect,” she added, in comments that went a step further than her criticism of the vote on Monday.

Clinton said two former presidential candidates in Belarus remain imprisoned a year after a government crackdown and she voiced concern about the case of Ukraine’s Tymoshenko, who faces seven years in prison for abuse of office.

“There are growing restrictions on the exercise of fundamental rights through the OSCE region,” she said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate unanimously approved tougher sanctions against Iran on Thursday, voting to penalize foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank, the main conduit for its oil revenues.

The Senate acted despite warnings from Obama administration officials who said threatening U.S. allies might not be the best way to get their cooperation in action against Iran.

Administration officials said they were indeed looking to sanction Iran’s central bank, but in a calibrated manner, to avoid roiling oil markets or antagonizing allies.

The United States already bars its own banks from dealing with the Iranian central bank, so U.S. sanctions would operate by dissuading other foreign banks from doing so by threatening to cut them off from the U.S. financial system.

The United States and its Western allies have supported multiple rounds of sanctions on Iran, seeking to persuade it to curtail its nuclear work. Washington suspects Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program to develop an atomic bomb, although Iran says its program is solely to produce electricity.

The Senate voted 100-0 for an amendment sponsored by Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat, and Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican, that would allow the U.S. president to sanction foreign banks found to have carried out a “significant financial transaction with the Central Bank of Iran.”

“We seek to break the stable financial intermediary in between Iranian oil contracts and the outside world, so that it will just be easier to buy oil from elsewhere,” Kirk said in debate this week.

WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (Reuters) – Top U.S. officials said on Thursday they were looking to sanction Iran’s central bank in a calibrated manner to avoid roiling oil markets or antagonizing allies, though that approach clashed with U.S. lawmakers pushing for fast action.

The Senate is expected to vote on Thursday on an amendment backed by Democrats and Republicans that would require sanctioning foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank, the main conduit for its oil revenues.

The United States already bars its own banks from dealing with the Iranian central bank, so U.S. sanctions would operate by dissuading other foreign banks from doing so by threatening to cut them off from the U.S. financial system.

The United States and its Western allies have supported multiple rounds of sanctions on Iran, seeking to persuade it to curtail its nuclear work. Washington suspects Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program to develop an atomic bomb, though Iran says its program is solely to produce electricity.

U.S. officials made clear that they oppose an amendment sponsored by Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat, and Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican, that would allow the U.S. president to sanction foreign banks found to have carried out a “significant financial transaction with the Central Bank of Iran.”

On Nov. 21, the United States, Britain and Canada announced new sanctions on Iran’s energy and financial sectors, but the Obama administration stopped short of targeting Iran’s central bank, a step that U.S. officials said could send oil prices skyrocketing and jeopardized global economic recovery.

“The Obama administration strongly supports increasing the pressure on Iran, and that includes properly designed and targeted sanctions against the central bank of Iran, appropriately timed as part of a carefully phased and sustainable policy toward bringing about Iranian compliance with its obligations,” U.S. Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Pakistan and the United States depend on one another too much to allow the deaths of two dozen Pakistani soldiers in a clash with NATO forces on Saturday to cause a definitive rupture.

But the incident, the latest in a series of embarrassments this year to bedevil the relationship between two ostensible allies, will only aggravate the mistrust between the countries and will require quick diplomatic work to contain.

Analysts and Western officials who track the relationship said a speedy, thorough investigation to find out what happened, establish responsibility and make amends is vital, though any reconciliation may be harder to achieve if NATO forces conclude that the Pakistani side started the fight.

“They still have a great deal of co-dependence. The United States needs Pakistan until it wraps up kinetic operations in Afghanistan,” said Shuja Nawaz, an authority on the Pakistani military at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.

“Pakistan, of course, is still fairly heavily dependent on U.S. financial and military support,” he added. “But the way things have been going this past year, it’s one event after another.”

NATO helicopters and fighter jets based in Afghanistan attacked two Pakistan military outposts on Saturday, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers in what Islamabad called an unprovoked assault.

A Western official and a senior Afghan security official on Sunday said that NATO and Afghan forces came under fire from across the border with Pakistan before NATO aircraft attacked the Pakistani forces.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Pakistan and the United States depend on one another too much to allow the deaths of two dozen Pakistani soldiers in airstrikes by NATO forces on Saturday to cause a definitive rupture.

But the incident, the latest in a series of embarrassments this year to bedevil the relationship between two ostensible allies, will only aggravate the mistrust between the countries, and will require quick diplomatic work to contain.

Analysts and Western officials who track the relationship said a speedy, thorough investigation to find out what happened, establish responsibility and make amends is vital, although any reconciliation may be harder to achieve if NATO forces conclude the Pakistani side started the fight.

“They still have a great deal of co-dependence,” said Shuja Nawaz, an authority on the Pakistani military at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington. “The United States needs Pakistan until it wraps up kinetic operations in Afghanistan.”

The United States plans to have most troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

“Pakistan, of course, is still fairly heavily dependent on U.S. financial and military support,” Nawaz said. “But the way things have been going this past year, it’s one event after another.”

All the details of what happened in the latest incident, in Pakistan’s Mohmand tribal agency, are not yet publicly known.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States urged its ally Bahrain, home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, to quickly address abuses laid out in a report on Wednesday that alleged that Bahraini security forces used torture to obtain confessions.

A Bahraini government-commissioned panel charged with investigating abuses found that Bahrain’s security forces used excessive force to suppress pro-democracy protests this year, saying five people were tortured to death.

The United States, which has been faulted by rights activists for not criticizing the island kingdom more sharply for the crackdown, appeared to carefully balance its demand for the abuses to be addressed with praise for its Gulf ally.

“We are deeply concerned about the abuses identified in the report and urge the Government and all elements of Bahraini society to address them in a prompt and systematic manner,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement.

“We believe the … report offers a historic opportunity for all Bahrainis to participate in a healing process that will address long-standing grievances and move the nation onto a path of genuine, sustained reform,” Clinton added.

Neither Clinton’s statement, nor one from the White House, hinted at any distance between the Obama administration and the royal family that rules Bahrain, although Washington has said it will weigh human rights in decisions about military sales.

Clinton made a point of stressing the “strategic interests” that the two countries share, a likely reference to containing Bahrain’s neighbor Iran, which the United States suspects of pursuing nuclear weapons and accuses of supporting terrorism.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States urged its ally Bahrain, home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, to quickly address abuses laid out in a report Wednesday that said Bahraini security forces used torture to obtain confessions.

A Bahraini government-commissioned panel charged with investigating abuses found that Bahrain’s security forces used excessive force to suppress pro-democracy protests this year, saying five people were tortured to death.

The United States, which has been faulted by rights activists for not criticizing the island kingdom more sharply for the crackdown, appeared to carefully balance its demand for the abuses to be addressed with praise for its Gulf ally.

“We are deeply concerned about the abuses identified in the report and urge the Government and all elements of Bahraini society to address them in a prompt and systematic manner,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement.

“We believe the … report offers a historic opportunity for all Bahrainis to participate in a healing process that will address long-standing grievances and move the nation onto a path of genuine, sustained reform,” Clinton added.

Neither Clinton’s statement, nor one from the White House, hinted at any distance between the Obama administration and the royal family that rules Bahrain, although Washington has said it will weigh human rights in decisions about military sales.

Clinton made a point of stressing the “strategic interests” that the two countries share, a likely reference to containing Bahrain’s neighbor Iran, which the United States suspects of pursuing nuclear weapons and accuses of supporting terrorism.

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States and European Union are set to impose more sanctions on Iran, with Britain on Monday banning dealings with the central bank and France calling for measures on an “unprecedented scale” over Tehran’s nuclear program.

The steps come in response to a November 8 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that presented intelligence suggesting Iran had worked on designing an atomic bomb and may still be secretly carrying out related research. Iran says its nuclear work is entirely peaceful.

The range of unilateral steps planned by Western powers reflects the difficulty of persuading Russia and China not to veto further measures at the U.N. Security Council, where they have supported four previous sanctions resolutions.

While Britain ordered its financial institutions to stop all business with Iran, a source familiar with the sanctions said the steps would not directly target trade in Iranian oil.

“We believe that the Iranian regime’s actions pose a significant threat to the UK’s national security and the international community. Today’s announcement is a further step to preventing the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons,” said British finance minister George Osborne.

The United States has not bought Iranian oil since 1995, but it appeared unlikely the U.S. Treasury would try to now cut off the Iranian banking system entirely, a move that could disrupt global energy markets and harm U.S. economic recovery.

A U.S. official said the Treasury Department planned to designate Iran as an area of “primary money laundering concern” on Monday, a move allowing it to take steps to isolate the Iranian financial sector further.

WASHINGTON, Nov 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department plans to designate Iran as an area of “primary money laundering concern” on Monday, a U.S. official said, a move that will prompt new steps to isolate Tehran from the international financial system.

The moves are expected to be coordinated with Canada and Britain, where the finance ministry ordered all UK financial institutions to stop doing business with their Iranian counterparts and the Iranian central bank.

The United States is not expected to add Iran’s central bank, Bank Markazi, to its formal sanctions list, which could effectively cut it off from the international financial system, cause oil prices to spike higher and hurt U.S. economic recovery

But a U.S. official said the declaration is aimed at signaling to foreign governments and financial institutions that they must wind down their ties to Iran, with tougher sanctions to come down the road.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will outline the new steps against Iran at 4:30 p.m. EST (2130 GMT) at the State Department in Washington, the Treasury Department said.

Under Section 311 of the U.S. Patriot Act, such a designation allows the United States to take a range of “special measures” against a jurisdiction as a whole, an institution, a class of transactions or a type of account.

The decision, first reported by ABC News and the Wall Street Journal, follows a Nov. 8 report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog that presented intelligence suggesting Iran had worked on designing an atomic bomb and may still be secretly carrying out related research. [ID:nL5E7MK095]

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Britain ordered its financial institutions on Monday to halt all business with Iranian counterparts, including the central bank, and the United States is also expected to tighten sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear program.

The British move however will not target trade in Iranian oil, a source familiar with the sanctions said. It also appeared unlikely that the U.S. Treasury would try to cut off the Iranian banking system entirely, a move that could disrupt global energy markets and harm the U.S. economic recovery.

Britain said the sanctions were in response to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) latest report on Iran, which highlighted fresh concerns about the possible military dimensions of Tehran’s nuclear program.

“We believe that the Iranian regime’s actions pose a significant threat to the UK’s national security and the international community. Today’s announcement is a further step to preventing the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons,” said finance minister George Osborne.

In Washington, a U.S. official said the Treasury Department planned to designate Iran as an area of “primary money laundering concern” on Monday, a move allowing it to take steps to isolate the Iranian financial sector further.

PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE?

Henry Smith, Middle East analyst at the Control Risks consultancy in London, said the British move may not significantly affect Iran’s major oil customers.