Iran Focus: Brussels, Oct. 25 The leader of the main Iranian opposition coalition met on Tuesday with the President of the Belgian Senate. Iran Focus
Brussels, Oct. 25 The leader of the main Iranian opposition coalition met on Tuesday with the President of the Belgian Senate.
Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), arrived at the Belgian Senate in Brussels under heavy police escort where she was greeted by Senate President Anne-Marie Lizin along with Liberal Senator Patrik Vankrunkelsven and Socialist Senator Pierre Galand.
Rajavi held talks with Lizin and presented her with a large book containing a list of tens of thousands of her movements supporters that had been executed by Irans theocratic government since 1981.
The visit was angrily condemned by Tehran which summoned Belgiums ambassador in protest.
The NCRI is a broad coalition of groups and personalities which seek to oust Irans clerics from power with the aim of establishing a democratic, secular and coalition government in Iran. Among its member groups is the Peoples Mojahedin (PMOI or MeK) which was listed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union in mid-2002, in what the EUs then-Spanish leadership called a goodwill gesture to Tehran.
Belgiums Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that Rajavi was representing the NCRI during her visit rather than any single group in the coalition. The NCRI is not on the EUs blacklist, it said.
I ask EU governments, why are you ignoring the crimes of the mullahs regime. Why do you still pursue the policy of appeasement and make concessions to the butchers and suppressors of the Iranian people, Rajavi said during a speech to a group of Belgian Senators following her meeting with Lizin.
Last week, the EU belatedly announced that negotiations with the regime [over Tehrans nuclear program”> had been fruitless. … Despite the failure of the policy of appeasement, the EU still lacks a principled and decisive policy against the mullahs regime, she said.
Rajavi announced that her group had obtained a secret report by Irans Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the body in charge of nuclear negotiations with the West, which stated that Tehran believed that it could get away with carrying out sensitive nuclear work because of a lack of resolve by the international community to confront it.
The report purportedly stated that if Iran accepts the UN Security Councils demand to suspend its uranium enrichment activities or ceases its meddling in Iraq and Lebanon, it would mean the collapse of the regime.
Rajavi urged the EU to remove the terror tag from the PMOI and impose comprehensive diplomatic and trade sanctions and an oil embargo on Tehran.
In April, the Belgian Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution urging the EU to re-examine the terror label placed on the PMOI.
Lawmakers called on the Belgian government to reconsider the listing of the PMOI as a terrorist organisation within the framework of the European Union and on the basis of relevant information available.
A similar resolution urging the government to re-evaluate the PMOIs terror listing was unanimously adopted by the Belgian Senate in December 2005.
