IRAN TELLS MKO MEMBERS TO COME BACK AND FEEL SAFE IF..
By Safa Haeri
PARIS, 6 Apr. (IPS) In a move aimed at helping members of the outlawed Mojahedeen Khalq Organisation to escape the Iraqi inferno and possible imprisonment at the hands of the coalition forces, Iran called on them to return to Iran and have a "normal life" provided no one complains against them.
"MKO members who have not "private complaints outstanding against them, can return and have a normal life in the country", Information (Intelligence) Minister Hojjatoleslam Ali Yoonesi told the official news agency IRNA on Sunday, advising members of the Organisation, which is based In Baghdad, financed, supported and equipped by Saddam Hoseyn’s army to "use the opportunity" to their benefits and "leave their treacherous group".
Some members of the MKO who have fled to neighbouring Jordan with Sudanese or Palestinian passports faked or bought on the "market" disclosed that the leadership had ordered the remaining forces to co-operate with the infamous "Feda’yn of Saddam", Iraqi President’s most trusted and ferocious corps.
According to the Minister, some 100 members of the Marxist-Islamist Organisation, which is led by Mr. Mas'ood Rajavi and his wife Maryam, named by the Organisation as Iran's future president, have returned to Iran in the recent month, giving themselves to Iranian border guards. "Recent developments in Iraq has accelerated their return", he added, referring to the American-led war aimed at toppling the regime of Saddam Hoseyn.
Mr. Ahmad Ra’fat, an Iranian journalist covering the Iraqi war for the influential Spanish weekly "El Tiempo" told Iran Press Service that some of the members of the MKO who have defected the Organisation have expressed their readiness to go back to Iran, but are afraid of being executed, being regarded by both the regime and a great majority of Iranian as "traitors".
"Based on the Imam Khomeini's will, we have urged these naive individuals to give themselves up and live in tranquillity in the country", IRNA quoted Mr. Yoonesi as having said, accusing the MKO of "spying" for the Americans by making false allegations about Iran's use of nuclear energy".
"The Mojahedeen is a terrorist group", Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Kamal Kharazi said last week, adding that no government that would have the support of the Iraqi people after the fall of Saddam Hoseyn will allow this group to remain active in Iraq".
"The policy of the coalition is not to allow the Mojahedeen to have a base in Iraq after the fall of Saddam", Kharrazi further said, insisting however "this does not mean that we have negotiated with the coalition on the issue of the Mojahedeen".
"Iran has condemned the war raging just over the border in Iraq, but it is nevertheless hoping that the US-led coalition forces will knock out the MKO, the only Iranian armed opposition group dedicated to topple the Islamic regime of Iran through armed forces, observers say.
Informed sources in Tehran told IPS that contacts have been established with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and other relevant organisations to assist and help those of the MKO members willing to go back to their homeland.
The United States and some members of the European Union, like Britain, France and Germany have placed the MKO, which has claimed the assassination of American military personnel In Iran under the former regime as well as several Iranian high-ranking officials, both clerics and military of the present government, on their list of "terrorist organisations", but sparing the group’s political wing known as "National Council of Iranian Resistance".
However, the Organisation is supported by a substantial number of American congressmen as well as British MPs, considering the MKO as an opposition group fighting for democracy in Iran.
"The MKO has only one thing in common with a modern, progressive movement: the ability to carry out expensive communications campaigns in the West", IRNA quoted Mrs. Emma Nicholson, the European Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee deputy Chairman. ENDS IRAN MKO 7403