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Maryam Rajavi meets Belgian political personalities |
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Wednesday, 16 March 2005 |
Mr. Herman van Rompuy, Member of Parliament and former Deputy Prime
Minister of Belgium, and Mr. Peter Gijsels, international secretary of
the Flemish Christian Democratic Party, met and held talks with Mrs.
Maryam Rajavi at her residence in Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris.
Mr. van Rompuy, a former Christian Democratic Party president, offered
his greetings to Mrs. Rajavi for the upcoming Iranian New Year and
lauded her proposed "Third Option", presented in her speech at the
European Parliament in December 2004.
"We are aware of the atrocities taking place in Iran," Mr. van Rompuy
said. "I am very delighted that you and your movement have great
support among many European Parliamentarians, including members of the
Belgian parliament."
The Belgian statesman agreed with Mrs. Rajavi's assertion that the mullahs' regime did not belong to the twenty-first century.
He said a religious dictatorship such as the Iranian regime was
incapable of backing off even one step from its hard-line positions.
"Their first step backwards would take them to their total collapse,"
he said.
The Belgian MP said he foresaw a similar fate for the mullahs' regime
to other totalitarian regimes of recent history. He commended the
Iranian Resistance's perseverance over the past quarter-century in the
face of mullahs' brutal dictatorship and said, "Today the whole world
is witnessing important developments, and the Middle East is feeling
these changes, too. No matter how hard they try, the mullahs cannot
keep themselves isolated from these developments."
Mr. van Rompuy added, "I am very pleased to see that your movement has
introduced a new interpretation of a democratic, antifundamentalist
Islam. It is very important for Moslem masses to understand Islam could
coexist with all the values of a modern world such as secularism. The
model you present is exactly that."
Mr. Peter Gijsels, the international secretary of the Christian
Democrat Party of Belgium, emphasized the widespread support for the
Iranian Resistance in both the Belgian parliament and in the European
Peoples group in the European Parliament and their opposition to
including the People Mojahedin in the European Union's list of
terrorist organizations.
Mrs. Rajavi expressed her appreciation for the clear and firm position
Mr. van Rompuy and Mr. Gijsels, noting that years of "engagement" and
appeasement of the mullahs have yielded no results other than
strengthening the most hard-line faction of this regime.
Mrs. Rajavi said the mullahs in Iran know better than anyone that they
are running on their last legs, but will not stop suppression until the
end. She called on European governments to change their policy towards
this regime. |
