Iran Focus: London, Apr. 21 More than a dozen European lawmakers urged the European Union on Wednesday to cut all ties with Irans hard-line government and actively support the opposition coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran. Iran Focus
London, Apr. 21 More than a dozen European lawmakers urged the European Union on Wednesday to cut all ties with Irans hard-line government and actively support the opposition coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran.
A statement by the European Parliaments Friends of a Free Iran Inter-group, faxed to Iran Focus, said that a delegation of 13 Members of the European Parliament and the Belgian Senate made the call at a meeting with the councils President-elect Maryam Rajavi at her residence in Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris.
The parliamentary delegation stressed that more than two decades of appeasing Tehran had helped the theocratic regime remain in power, the statement said.
The deputies urged the EU to support Rajavis third option to deal with Irans nuclear threat. Rajavi said that the West should neither appease Tehran nor launch a military invasion, but should rather give political backing to the Iranian people and their Resistance.
The visit to Rajavis headquarters by the European Parliamentarians comes at a critical time, when Western governments, in close consultation with Russia and China, are trying to shape an effective response to the Iranian regimes open defiance of the international community over its nuclear program.
Rajavi told the Euro-MPs that Irans rulers consider the nuclear bomb, domination of Iraq and export of terrorism and fundamentalism as guarantees for their survival.
As such, they will never abandon them, she said.
The Iranian opposition leader said time was running out in trying to prevent Tehran from acquiring the nuclear bomb.
The delegation demanded that the EU remove the main Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin, from the list of terrorist groups, describing the group as a legitimate resistance movement.
The terrorist label has been a major blow to democracy in Iran and peace and tranquillity in the region and deprived the international community from a vital ally to thwart the mullahs’ nuclear weapons drive, the Parliamentarians statement added.
The statement, signed by Alejo Vidal Quadras, First Vice President of the European Parliament, and Paulo Casaca and Struan Stevenson, Co-Chairs of the Friends of a Free Iran, noted that the Parliamentarians condemned the restrictions imposed on Iranian dissidents in France at the request of the Iranian regime.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran is a genuinely democratic alternative that should be supported, the statement added.
Belgian Senator Margriet Hermans told the meeting, Similar to the European Parliament, we are opposed to the terror label against the Mojahedin. We adopted a resolution in the Belgian Senate unanimously, calling on the EU to review the blacklisting of the Mojahedin.
The parliamentary delegation said the time had come for the EU to recognise the Iranian resistance as the most serious factor in establishing democracy and human rights in Iran and peace and stability in the region.
