By Gabriele Parussini
Bloomberg - Thirteen members of the European Parliament, including a vice-president, said Europe needs to toughen its stance on Iran and support a regime change in that country.

``We in the European Parliament fully support the option of giving a democratic chance to the Iranian people,'' Alejo Vidal- Quadras Roca, first vice President of the EU Parliament, said at a meeting today with leaders of Iran's exiled opposition in Auvers-Sur-Oise, west of Paris.

``It's time for the EU to change its policy toward the regime. Iran has crossed the red line.''Vidal-Quadras Roca led a delegation of European MPs at a meeting with Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, or NCRI, an umbrella organization of resistance movements against the regime in the country.

By Parisa Hafezi

Reuters - Russia and Europe joined the United States on Wednesday in condemning Iran's assertion that it had enriched uranium in defiance of a U.N. demand, but Moscow said force could not resolve the dispute.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that Iran had enriched uranium for the first time and would now press ahead with industrial-scale enrichment.

His triumphant announcement keeps the Islamic Republic on a collision course with the United Nations and with Western countries convinced that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, not just fuel for power stations as it insists...

Exiled Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi said the West had been too soft on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"The policy of complaisance followed for years by the Western countries has permitted this country to get so close to a nuclear weapon," she told reporters in Strasbourg.

Information provided in 2002 by Rajavi's National Council of Resistance of Iran, which wants to oust Iran's clerical rulers, forced Tehran to lift the veil on its nuclear program.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi came to Strasbourg for a meeting in the Council of Europe on an invitations by the Liberal Democrats group to discuss about the increasing crisis between the world and the Iranian regime.

Mrs. Rajavi said that the policy of appeasement empowered the mullahs to pose a major threat to the world through their adventurous policies.

Video Report

The Associated Press, Geneva - A Swiss investigator has issued an international arrest warrant for a former Iranian minister for his alleged involvement in the slaying of an exiled Iranian opposition leader, a Swiss newspaper reported today.

Le Matin Dimanche reproduced part of the document in which Jacques Antenen, an investigative magistrate in the Swiss canton (state) of Vaud, requested Swiss federal authorities to demand the arrest of Ali Fallahian, Tehran's hard-line former intelligence minister.

Swissinfo - A Swiss judge has issued an arrest warrant for the former head of Iran's secret police for his role in the killing of a leading Iranian dissident 16 years ago.
 
Ali Fallahian is charged with masterminding the assassination of Kazem Rajavi, a renowned human rights advocate, near Geneva in April 1990.

According to a report in Lausanne-based newspaper Le Matin Dimanche, the international arrest warrant was issued by Swiss investigating magistrate Jacques Antenen on March 20.

It called on law enforcement agencies to arrest Fallahian – who for years headed Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and is currently a security advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei – and transfer him to the Canton Vaud Prison in Lausanne.

This week President Bush called Iran a grave threat to national security over its continued plans to pursue nuclear weapons.

On the eve of the UN Security Council meeting to discuss the issue, a delegation of British MPs and Lords from all three major political parties are in Paris to meet Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the Iranian opposition in exile. Following talks later this morning, they are expected to issue a joint statement. But what does the British delegation actually hope to achieve? Labour peer Lord Robin Corbett is one of them and I asked him what he hoped would happen?

PARIS, March 13, 2006 (AFP) - A British parliamentary delegation called Monday for the European Union to remove the main exiled Iranian opposition group from its terrorism blacklist, saying it was a force for democratic change in Iran.

"It is time that our government and others in the EU, recognised the realities and welcomed the Iranian Resistance as friends in a common effort to restore democracy and human rights," said Lord Corbett of Castle Vale.

"The unjustified labelling of the People's Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) as a terrorist organisation deprives the people of Iran and the world community of a supporter of peace efforts in the Middle East," said Corbett, who chairs the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom.