{mosimage}A UK Parliamentary delegation urged the Council of the European Union to abide by the ruling of the Court of the First Instance of the European Communities, which removed the main component of the Iranian Resistance, the People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), from its terrorist list. The delegation representing the British Parliamentary Committee of Iran Freedom, including its chairman, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, and Lord Clarke of Hampstead, held talks with Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, at her residence in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, on Sunday, 10 June 2007. {mosimage}A UK Parliamentary delegation urged the Council of the European Union to abide by the ruling of the Court of the First Instance of the European Communities, which removed the main component of the Iranian Resistance, the People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), from its terrorist list.

The delegation representing the British Parliamentary Committee of Iran Freedom, including its chairman, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, and Lord Clarke of Hampstead, held talks with Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, at her residence in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, on Sunday, 10 June 2007.

Mrs. Rajavi welcomed the delegation and thanked the Committee for all its efforts in support of the Iranian Resistance and its endeavours to establish freedom and democracy in Iran.

She said the Iranian regime had emerged as the single most dangerous menace to regional and international peace and security by its pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions, and its increasing meddling in Iraq, through financing, arming and dispatching terrorists and sophisticated weapons to that country.

Speaking on behalf of the Committee and a majority in the House of Commons and more than 200 Peers, Lord Corbett said it is abundantly clear to proponents of the policy of appeasement with Tehran that this policy had been a dismal failure. It was time for Europe and in particular the United Kingdom to stand with the Iranian people and not with those who had stolen freedom from them.

He noted that the dramatic rise in the number of anti-government protests in Iran by women, students, teachers and workers, despite a fierce crackdown, demonstrated the yearning by the overwhelming majority for regime change.

Lord Corbett added that by shackling the PMOI, through in its inclusion in the European Union's terrorist watch list and its proscription in the UK, the West was blocking the path to that change.

Lord Corbett emphasised that the ruling by the European Court was a landmark decision and a victory of justice. The EU's refusal to abide by the Court's verdict was a blatant breach of the rule of law, he added.

Lord Clarke said that the EU's approach to the Court's ruling had been disgraceful and that the integrity of Europe's judicial institutions was at stake.

Having examined the evidence provided by the UK government on the proscription of the PMOI, he stressed that there was no legal or factual justification for the continued proscription of the PMOI in the UK.

British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom
11 June 2007