NCRI – The Iraqi Prime Minister, coincident with his trip to the US and meeting with President Obama, admitted in a Wall Street Journal Interview that suppression and killing of Mojahedin and December 31st deadline for closure of Camp Ashraf is carried out at behest of the Iranian regime. Stressing that withdrawal of the American forces has been a demand of the Iranian regime, he said: “If the excuse [of Iran] was that the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil posed a threat to [Iranian] national security, then this danger is over now… We have an outstanding problem with the Iranians and it’s the issue of the presence of the Mujahedin-e Khalq and those people are a source of annoyance for them. This, too, is in the process of being resolved and it will end.”
Wall Street Journal quoted Maliki as saying that when the Mojahedin are moved by year end with the help of the UN, there would be no reason for the Iranian regime to interfere in Iraqi affairs and he would strongly oppose any interference of the regime.
The above statements are the best reasons why the December 31st deadline and the policy of forcible displacement have been dictated by the Iranian regime, and without protection of US forces or UN Blue Helmets, it will result to their slaughter. Were there not such a policy, Maliki would have welcomed the start of the UNHCR’s work for reaffirmation of the refugee status of the residents and their resettlement in third countries, he would not have opposed it, as he has done in the past few months.
The UNHCR has asked in August for extension of December 31st deadline for at least six months. At the time, the High Commissioner thought he would be able to start the process in September.
Maliki’s position comes while a widespread consensus in Iraq to delay this deadline exists. Ninety four Iraqi national leaders including distinguished Iraqi personalities such as Dr. Ayad Allawi, Dr. Saleh Mutlaq, Ayatollah Ayad Jamaluddin and 1,050,000 Iraqi citizens have condemned this deadline and forcible relocation which is the Iranian regime’s demand, in their statements,
Today the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament once again rejected internal relocation in his press conference in the Iraqi Parliament and said that the predominant view is their transfer to third countries and not to another location within Iraq, and that this has to happen within the framework of human rights and respecting their dignity and facilitating their leaving from Iraq.
Iraqi national leaders have repeatedly stressed that any force trying to deport the Mojahedin from Iraq has an organizational relation with the Iranian regime. No independent and democratic force within Iraq wants this except the proxies of the Iranian regime (Ayatollah Ayad Jamaluddin, Baghdadiyeh TV, March 8, 2009). The Secretary General of the Amnesty International’s UK branch wrote after the April 8, 2011 massacre in Ashraf that Ashraf is the gauge for human rights in Iraq (The Guardian, April 14, 2011)
Maliki’s reasoning is equivalent to saying that if the US wants to confront the nuclear mullahs and their terrorist actions in the United States, it has to deport the Iranian refugees or American citizens of Iranian origin, or to kill them. Maliki’s reasoning is this much illogical and ridiculous.
The course of the events in the past three years show that the Iraqi government and Maliki himself have been executors of the Iranian regime’s demands about Ashraf, and the only thing they would not care for is Iraqi national interest.
According to International Azzaman newspaper on January 5, 2009, in his meeting with Iranian regime Supreme leader, Khamenei, Maliki “is committed to close the case of Mojahedin Khalq based on a timetable soon”. In less than two months after that, the Iranian state media reported that Khamenei in his meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani asked him and Iraqi Prime Minister to follow up with bilateral agreement to deport the Mojahedin. On November 6, 2009, MEHR News agency wrote: “The Iraqi Prime Minister and the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament in Baghdad emphasized on the need for deporting the Mojahedin Khalq”. On October 23, 2011 the Iranian Foreign Ministry declared that it has reached a seven point agreement with the Iraqi government to close Ashraf.
Since the statements of Maliki leave no doubt about his ominous plans to execute the Iranian regime’s orders for annihilating Ashraf residents, the Iranian Resistance once again urges the US, UN and the EU to oppose the suppressive deadline and forcible relocation of the residents and to make necessary steps to undertake the protection of Ashraf residents by the US or the UN forces.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
December 12, 2011