IRAN: Irish parliamentarians should not visit Iran and Ireland should push for a strong resolution at the United Nations condemning human rights abuses by the Tehran regime, according to an Iranian opposition leader-in-exile, Mr Firouz Mahvi, writes Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Commenting on a visit to Iran by a group of Fianna Fáil MEPs in the aftermath of the recent earthquake at Bam, Mr Mahvi said: "I don't think it is a good thing. Any trips to Iran, especially by parliamentarians, give a kind of legitimacy to the regime."
Mr Mahvi, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said on a visit to Dublin: "The right policy for Ireland is to stick to its old values of supporting human rights, for which Ireland is always famous. Especially, I think they should push forward for a strong resolution in the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva in March."
The NCRI is made up of groups and individuals who took part in the revolution which overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979 but then fell foul of the new Islamic regime led by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Mr Mahvi, who was a young student at the time, said ruefully that Iran went from bad to worse, "from one form of dictatorship to an even more brutal dictatorship".
He claimed there have been "about 120,000" executions since the fall of the Shah. A constituent element of the NCRI has, however, been accused of engaging in terrorist activities and it has also been condemned by its opponents as a puppet of the former Iraqi dictatorship. The NCRI is an umbrella organisation for some of the opposition forces in exile and it accepted the patronage and protection of the Saddam Hussein regime for a period of 17 years. "We are not an intellectual group, we are a serious force. In order to be able to topple the regime we needed to have a military force and we could not form it in Los Angeles or in France, we had to have it in a neighbouring country to Iran."
Mr Mahvi said the relationship was conducted on the basis of non-interference in each other's affairs, as with two governments.