European politician’s trip to Iran “on ice”

European Voice: The German Green MEP Angelika Beer will, it seems, be denied her planned trip to Tehran which she thinks is her due. European Voice

Volume 12 Number 17, 4-10 May 2006, page 32

The German Green MEP Angelika Beer will, it seems, be denied her planned trip to Tehran which she thinks is her due.

She chairs the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Iran but the country’s government is demanding that its name is changed to the delegation for relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Beer felt this was a small price to pay and told her fellow MEPs that a vote against the name change “would de facto mean the end of the functioning of the delegation”.

Paulo Casaca, a Portuguese Socialist MEP from the People’s Republic of the Azores, came out strongly against the proposed change, denouncing “the appeasement policies of the European leaderships to the Islamo-fascist dictatorship”.

The vote went Casaca’s way. So Beer’s trip is on ice.