NCRI – A conference entitled "The Iranian Fundamentalist Regime: A Growing Threat", was held at the British Parliament a day after the release of a report by the Iraqi Study Group in the United States.
Over 25 members of both Houses of Parliament from the three main political parties addressed the conference and gave support to a plan proposed by the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom which dealt with Iran and the Middle East. The following is the text of a speech by Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, who chairs the committee:
Lord Corbett and colleagues, I was reflecting listening to the speakers, particularly Lord Archer, Lord Slynn, how irritating it must be for the Iranian government to know that in this building, the sight of our ancient democracy, which gave birth, is the genesis of so many parliamentary institutions, free parliamentary institutions around the world that members of a whole range of political parties in the United Kingdom can come together, join together in order to try and mould and shape the policy of Her Majesty’s government of the United Kingdom at a time when we are clearly at the crossroads in dealing with the crisis that exists in the middle east and the wider region around the middle east crisis.
And of course we are doing it, because we know that our British government is precisely responsive, to parliamentary pressure, to the views of distinguished jurists and also will listen to the mood of a free media. And it must also irritate them and indeed we know that it irritates them, because they will try and frustrate the reporting and the conveying of our deliberations here in the parliament of Westminster. They will try and frustrate that being conveyed to the brave people in Iran who seek knowledge and truth from their brave countrymen and women who live in exile, in Europe, in North America and also to the brave people holding aloft the flag of freedom in the city of Ashraf. To whom, unashamedly this morning we send our renewed greetings and best wishes for their endeavours.
We also use this occasion for coming together of this parliament, to articulate, indeed I would use the word prosecute the Iranian regime. We do it here in our meeting today. We do it through our media and we join with other legislators around the world, but particularly in the European Union, in North America, who give notice to those people who are perpetrating the most horrendous human rights abuses in Iran, who are exporting terror around the world that the day of reckoning will come.
One of the principles which has been enshrined since World War 2 is that there will be no hiding place, that we will one day prosecute the perpetrators of abuses whether or not those abuses were carried out in Iran or in Arab countries around the world, the atrocities of which have their roots and the fingerprints of the Iranian regime. And we will particularly draw attention on those occasions to the 120,000 executions or more against Iranian men, women and children, the continued human rights abuses, the unjust imprisonment of people who have stood and wished to articulate their religious or political faiths freely and we will also indight them on the terror and the deaths which they have brought to the Lebenanon, to Palestine and to Iraq.
We will also call the governments around the world who have the intelligence to know that so much explosions, deaths and carnage have been orchestrated or exported from Iran by the Iranian regime. Indeed, our own United Kingdom ministers have over the last 2 years, albeit with some hesitation which I regret, but have articulated in this parliamentary building the fact that so much ordnance, explosives and weapons of death which have been used in Iraq and elsewhere and in the Lebanon have emanated from Iran and I include in that, British Foreign Ministers and indeed our own Prime Minister.
Now my friends, we ask ourselves what needs to be done? We need the coalition forces in Iraq to expose this even more and to expel the perpetrators. We need to stiffen the sinuses of the Iraq government, of ensuring that the territorial integrity of their state is not challenged, is not invaded by these agents of the Iranian regime. We need to require, stiffen the sinuses of the Iraq government to recognize their responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to protect the unarmed people living in Ashraf city. Indeed, we look to the coalition to reaffirm the duties to protect those people in Ashraf city and to respond to the petition of over 5 million Iraqis of all faiths and many ethnic groups who have asked their government to protect those in Ashraf. And we also renew our message to the United Nations High Commission in Geneva that they to have obligations to reaffirm the protection of the people of Ashraf city. We also look to the United Kingdom government to put action in accordance with what they have uttered and we want to see robust sanctions against the Iranian regime rather than appeasement.
In my view there needs to be greater and tighter export controls applied to Iranian regime. They should be investigated, probed every application for exports to see that there is no dual use and that end user certificates are not bogus. We join our colleagues right across the political spectrum and the people of no party, the distinguished jurists who are here and who support our parliamentary campaign, to end the terror tag which is so unfairly applied to the Peoples Mujahedeen of Iran. Not only is it unfair, it is bad politics. It sends all the wrong messages to the people in Tehran who are exporting death and destruction and assassination around the world. And we look forward to a day when the British government will engage in a dialogue with the National Council for Resistance of Iran and put an end to this repeated and foolhardy appeasement which has been followed up to now.
So, my dear friends that is the unite message of so many parliamentarians here in the United Kingdom joining with their brothers and sisters in their parliaments around the world. We will try and shape and mould both the policy of the United Kingdom and the European Union to say quite definitely to Tehran that we will not giveway under pressure. We are going to resist you policy of exporting fundamentalist policies to western Europe and the middle east and we look forward to the day where we can welcome a free parliament of Tehran to match this one where we are articulating our case this morning.
