NCRI President-elect says extensive anti-regime protests in Iran demonstrate growing support for democratic change.
Middle East Online, LONDON – Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said extensive anti-regime protests in Iran demonstrate growing support for democratic change.
Her comments came at the end of a meeting this morning with a group of British MPs at Rajavi’s residence in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris. The delegation led by Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, who chairs the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, included lawyers and members of both Houses of Parliament from all three major political parties.
Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, Lord Russell-Johnston (Former President of the Council of Europe), Baroness Harris of Richmond, Andrew Mackinlay, (Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons) and David Amess, MP, attended a press briefing alongside the Iranian opposition figure at the end of their meeting this morning on recent Iranian developments.
"The Iranian Resistance can bring about democratic change in Iran. We offer a secular government based on democratic principles, which respects human rights," Rajavi said, adding: "We enjoy a firm social support, a political alternative representing the Iranian people’s different ethnic and religious groups, and a solid organized force alongside the Iranian border ready to play a key role in shattering the atmosphere of terror imposed by the regime and organizing a popular uprising needed for a change."
She suggested that the international community recognize the right of the Iranian people to resist this regime by according observer status to the NCRI in the UN.
Rajavi considered the referral of Iran’s nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council "a first step in facing the Iranian nuclear threat." She called for urgent measures to be taken. The MPs welcomed the referral of the dossier to the Security Council and said necessary sanctions should be adopted to prevent the regime from developing nuclear weapons.
"We agreed that the biggest challenge to the world community today is the situation in the Middle East and the expansion of Islamic fundamentalism whose repercussions are not limited to the region," the Iranian opposition leader said. "The clerical regime in Iran is at the heart of this challenge, beginning from Iraq but no less in the Middle East peace process as well," she added.
Rajavi said that Europe had yet to define a new policy on Iran. "Europe should first acknowledge the destructive impact of its past policy of appeasement according to which the main Iranian opposition has been called a terrorist organization, on the request of the mullahs, as confirmed recently by Mr. (Jack) Straw."
Lord Corbett said: "Trying to appease the mullahs has not worked. It has simply helped to keep a repressive and brutal regime in power. We support Mrs Rajavi’s view that neither military force nor appeasement is the answer to the threat posed by the Iranian regime. Instead, democratic change can be achieved through the Iranian people and their Resistance.
Calling on the British government and the European Union to remove the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) from the British and European list of terrorist organizations, the MPs stated in their joint declaration: "The unjustified labeling of the PMOI as a terrorist organization deprives the people of Iran and the world community of a supporter of peace efforts in the Middle East and a vital ally in efforts to prevent the mullahs from developing nuclear weapons, thereby avoiding turmoil in the region. It was the PMOI who first disclosed the regime’s clandestine nuclear weapons program."
According to the declaration, some 450 members of both Houses of the British Parliament and 2,000 British lawyers back the efforts of the Iranian Resistance to bring about freedom and democracy in Iran and remove the terror tag from the PMOI.
In its declaration, the delegation recognized the role played by the PMOI in advancing the democratic political process in Iraq and exposing the terrorist and fundamentalist meddling of the Iranian regime in that country. It was mentioned in the briefing that a recent declaration signed by some 12,000 Iraqi jurists in support of the Iranian resistance also asks for the removal of the PMOI from the terror list.
