Moscow/Paris - A long and bitter custody battle over a Franco-Russian three-year-old girl turned political on Tuesday when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded that she be returned to her Russian mother. "We are going to do everything necessary to protect our citizens," Lavrov was quoted as saying by news agency Interfax about Elise, who was turned over to her French father on Monday - three weeks after her Russian mother had snatched her from him.

Lavrov also criticized Hungarian authorities for "too hastily" handing the girl over to Frenchman Jean-Michel Andre after she and her mother, Irina Belenkaya, had been discovered on Sunday trying to cross the Hungarian border into Ukraine.

The girl and her mother had been fugitives since March 20, when two men assaulted Andre and abducted the girl in the southern French city of Arles. A French court had awarded Andre custody of his daughter.

Elise has been the hapless object of an international tug-of-war between her father and mother since their acrimonious divorce in 2007.

That same year, Belenkaya abducted Elise for the first time and took her to Russia. In September 2008, her father traveled to Russia an abducted her back to France.

Andre and his daughter were expected to return to France later on Tuesday. French media reported that he had dropped his complaint against his ex-wife and was willing to share custody of Elise with her. (dpa)