“Our policy only encourages the Iranian leaders, since not only do they ignore the (UN) Security Council, but they also strive to undermine the stability of Iraq and of the Middle East as a whole, and more recently, they seized British sailors in broad daylight”, said Vidal-Quadras.
The Spanish MEP spoke at a press conference organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), along with his colleagues the Scottish Struan Stevenson, Portuguese Paulo Casaca and the scientific director of the European Lawyers Union, Jean-Pierre Spitzer.
The participants raised “contradictions” in the position of the main European authorities and certain EU member states, and the United Kingdom and France. They criticized what they consider to be the appeasement policy of Brussels with Iran.
These member states according to them, try to give secret new concessions to the Iranian regime in order to persuade it to suspend its uranium enrichment programme.
One of these concessions would be a promise by France and the United Kingdom that the main Iranian opposition group, the People’s Modjahedin remains on the European list of terrorist organizations, in spite of a decision by the EU Court of First Instance in December last year, which invalidates the way in which the EU Council created this list.
Struan Stevenson quoted a letter sent to several British MPs by Prime Minister Tony Blair, dated 19 March which confirmed the EU Council agreed on January 30 to maintain the People’s Mojahedin on the list, in what the MEP considers a final decision.
However officially, the 27 member states agreed on this day to communicate to the People’s Mojahedin the arguments for maintaining them on the list and freezing their assets in the EU. They gave them one month to produce their arguments and supply the appropriate documentation, before the adoption of a definitive decision.
Firouz Mahvi, a member of the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee regretted that “the UK and France have sacrificed the whole of Europe for their own interests. It is an illusion to think that concessions to this regime can change its policy and its practices”. He added that the case of the British soldiers “is a direct consequence of this appeasement policy”.
The fifteen British sailors were seized last Friday by Iranian naval forces, alleging they were in Iranian waters.
The participants in the press conference consider it to be “contradictory” that the EU with a rich 50 year history based on the ideals of dignity, legitimacy and the rule of law, undermine these principles by not respecting the verdict of its own court.
Stevenson pointed out that the Iranian regime’s objective is “to convert the region into a Shiite rampart lead by Teheran”.
“It is not only about a problem for the Middle East. It became a problem for the EU too”, declared the Scottish MEP.