NCRI – The UN’s representative in Iraq Martin Kobler should quit his job after failing the United Nations and the residents of Camp Liberty, former US ambassador Marc Ginsberg has told a conference on Friday (Feb. 22) in Houston entitled, “Iran: Prospects for Democratic Change, U.S. Policy Options.”
And the defenseless residents of the Camp should be returned to Ashraf and declared refugees by the UN, he said.
Mr Ginsberg – former ambassador to Morocco from 1994–1998 and deputy senior Middle East policy adviser to the US President from 1978–1981 – was speaking at a conference in Houston, Texas on Friday on the future of Iran.
Camp Liberty near Baghdad houses thousands of members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) who were forcibly removed from their 26 years home in Camp Ashraf.
He said: “A rocket attack, under the very connivance of the Iraqi Government, resulted in the deaths of members of the camp, and wounded over a hundred, and the best that Martin Kobler can say is that this was somehow unexpected and uncalled for.
“I have message to the United Nations and to Mr Kobler – If you can not do your job, then get out of the way.”
He said as a former diplomat, he would be ’embarrassed’ at the safety and security the UN had provided to people in Liberty who had earned the right to trust the American people and the United Nations.
And he added: “The conduct of Martin Kobler, is testament to the failure of the United Nations to fulfill its moral obligation and legal obligation to the people of Camp Liberty and to the United States Government.
“And it is essential for the United Nations to do everything possible to ensure the safety and security of those people and that they should be declared, immediately, political refugees by United Nations.
“They did not deserve to die. And the people who are sitting in Camp Liberty now are looking for a strong message of support from us that is more than merely words.
For every person” that is sitting in that camp, there are hundred thousand or a million of them who share the same aspirations in Iran. Freedom and dignity!
“They are just representative of the majority of Iranians inside Iran and outside of Iran who want a restoration of freedom and democracy in their country.
“I believe the American people who have sacrificed so much in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, deserve a government that is going to go the extra mile to see if an agreement is possible, and as you heard from Mayor Giuliani, how many times do you have to hear the word no, to take no for an answer?
“There is an alternative to war, and that is to empower the forces of democracy in Iran and outside Iran to change that regime.
“The people who died in that attack on February 9th, and who died earlier in Camp Ashraf, also deserve to have a government and a United Nations that is not going to dishonor their memory by turning their backs.”
