TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) -– President Mohammad Khatami here on Wednesday described the arrest of two Iranian TV reporters by U.S. troops in Iraq as a clear violation of human rights.

Khatami, talking to reporters after an open session of the Majlis, said Iran has spoken with Britain and has sent a message to the United States over the fate of the reporters, and expressed regret that there has been no response. “Iran has made concerted efforts to obtain the release of the reporters,” Khatami said. “We will continue our efforts and hope that the issue will be resolved as soon as possible.”

The president added that he had told Abdelaziz Al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), on Monday to use his good offices with the Iraqi Governing Council to determine the fate of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) reporters.

U.S. troops On July 1 arrested IRIB reporters Soheil Karimi and Saeid Aboutaleb along with their interpreter and driver near the town of Diwaniyah where they were filming a documentary on the lives of Iraqis during the occupation.

The director of the Asia Desk of Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) radio network on Wednesday described international media coverage of the case as inadequate.

He told the Mehr News Agency over the phone that he regretted the continued detention of the reporters and could not understand why the U.S. troops had arrested the reporters.

He said that international news agencies should be giving the case comprehensive coverage, stressing that he would seriously follow up the matter himself in order to obtain more information.

The chief editor of Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Peter Munsch, said on Wednesday that his newspaper is ready to publish any news regarding the two reporters who are being held by coalition forces in Iraq.

In a phone conversation with the Mehr News Agency, Munsch said that the staff of Süddeutsche Zeitung were saddened by the arrest of the reporters and are seriously worried about their fate.

He also highlighted the need for the world’s mass media to make efforts to guarantee the security of reporters and journalists.

Munsch said that there was no justifiable reason for the arrest of the IRIB documentary filmmakers.

He also called on the organization Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières -- RSF) to take the necessary measures to resolve the issue, saying RSF must make more serious efforts to provide security for reporters.

Parviz Esmaeili, the managing director of the Mehr News Agency, also said Wednesday that the world is now being overwhelmed with deception and hypocrisy and the detention of Soheil Karimi and Saeed Aboutaleb is like the imprisonment of free thought.

Speaking in a gathering attended by members of the families of Aboutaleb and Karimi to mark the 100th day of their detention in Iraq which was held at the offices of the Mehr News Agency, Esmaeili said that in recent years it has become obvious that the U.S. slogan about the free flow of information is just rhetoric.

“Thus the arrest of the two documentarians is imprisonment of information by the U.S.,” he said.

Esmaeili said that the U.S. is trying to deceive the world and force everyone to bow to its hegemony, adding that it uses any means at its disposal to destroy free thought.

“A world power that feels threatened by the activities of two reporters is a paper tiger and the international media, particularly the independent and Islamic ones, should expose this reality,” he said.

Esmaeili expressed regret that the domestic press has failed to appropriately cover the developments in the case.

He added that we would have obtained better results if we had acted in solidarity to protest against the arrest of the reporters.

Esmaeili stressed that Aboutaleb and Karimi in fact made a documentary in the style of the Iranian media which is being suppressed now but will abash many in the future.

He added that the media should make an example of this detention in order to inform the world.

On Wednesday Saeed Aboutaleb’s wife Dalpi criticized Iranian officials and the domestic press for their failure to prepare the ground for the release of the Iranian reporters held in Iraq.

She told reporters that after the arrest of Aboutaleb and Karimi she had contacted Iranian officials as well as the U.S. and British embassies to obtain information about them.

“But, unfortunately, our efforts did not result in any effective measures about the issue,” she said.

“We didn’t ask for anything from the officials except that they be treated as members of the international community,” Dalpi added.

She said that they had asked for permission to visit the documentarians but were told that only diplomatic officials would be allowed to meet them.

“We then asked the minister of culture and Islamic guidance to make arrangements for a diplomatic envoy to travel to Iraq to visit Aboutaleb and Karimi,” Dalpi added. “However, (Culture Minister) Masjed-Jamei told us that a letter had been sent to the Foreign Ministry to that effect, but the ministry had taken no measures in that connection.”