Mrs. Rajavi declares her readiness to travel to Baghdad for talks with the Government of Iraq at the presence of UN Secretary General’s Representative to Iraq, US Secretary of State’s Special Advisor on Ashraf, Special Advisor to Baroness Ashton on Ashraf, Vice-president of the European Parliament, President of the Delegation for Relations with Iraq at the European Parliament and the lawyers of Ashraf.

NCRI – Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, welcomed the peaceful resolution of the Ashraf crisis and repeated her readiness to visit Baghdad immediately to engage in discussions with the Iraqi government on arrangements to implement the plan for the peaceful resolution of Ashraf crisis and to ensure the minimum guarantees for the safe and security of 400 Ashraf residents as they relocate to Camp Liberty.

The talks should be held in presence of Ambassador Dan Fried, Special Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State on Ashraf; Martin Kobler, the UNSG Representative to Iraq; Ambassador Jean de Ruyt, Special Adviser to Baroness Ashton on Ashraf; Dr. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, Vice-president of the European Parliament; Struan Stevenson, President of European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq; and lawyers of Ashraf.

Mrs. Rajavi noted that she had already made this proposal to the Government of Iraq through the United Nations and U.S. officials, but had not yet received any response. Pressuring the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and the Iranian Resistance to accept inhumane conditions that are demands of the Iranian regime, are unacceptable, she emphasized, especially when fraught with distortions, misrepresentations and falsifications.

Commenting on Wednesday’s remarks by Prime Minister Maliki, Mrs. Rajavi said:  “If Mr. Maliki, as he says, truly seeks the departure of PMOI from Iraq, he should have not wasted any time in the past four months and should have immediately had accepted that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees start its work in Ashraf to reaffirm the residents’ refugee status in order to resettle them in third countries.”

“Mr. Maliki claims that the PMOI has invaded an Iraqi city named Ashraf. However he conveniently forgets to acknowledge that the residents had turned this previously arid and barren piece of  land into a city during the past 25 years of  hard work  and enormous costs, and that they had certain rights.”

“More importantly,” Mrs. Rajavi said,  “Mr. Maliki deliberately remained silent about attacks on Ashraf in the past three years, including massacres of July 2009 and April 2011, in which 47 residents were killed and 1071 were wounded.  Neither did he mention that 12 residents had died due to lack of access to proper  medical services.  Instead, he referred to the terrorist designation of the PMOI by the U.S. and the clerical regime. Ironically, today the European Court of Justice categorically rejected any claim that the PMOI was terrorist.”

“It seems,  in his own words, the only red line for Mr. Maliki is refraining from ‘inflicting any harm,’ and upsetting the clerical regime.”

Mrs. Rajavi added: “Human rights principles and international law make forcible relocation illegal and the UN Secretary General, Deputy Secretary General, the UN High Commission for Refugees, the International Committee of Red Cross, UN Assistance Mission in Iraq and majorities in more than 30 parliaments have reiterated this fact.” Nevertheless, underscoring that that the GOI had not accepted the protection of Ashraf residents at Camp Liberty by the U.S., the Blue Helmets, EU forces or even private U.S. security companies,  Mrs. Rajavi said that upon the requests of the UN and the U.S., she had asked the residents of Ashraf  to accept in principle to relocate to Camp Liberty, with the minimum guarantees for their security and well-being and improvement in their conditions; the minimum humanitarian and legal guarantees that have not yet received positive response from the GOI.”

The President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, stated that the following are the minimum humanitarian and legal guarantees:

1. Safe and secure transfer of  each and every one of Ashraf residents, without exception, to Camp Liberty with their vehicles and moveable property under international observation;
2. 24/7 monitoring by the UN and the U.S. until the resettlement of the last person to the third countries;
3. Initiation of UNHCR work;
4. Iraqi forces shall be stationed outside of  fenced area of the new location to ensure security and tranquility, particularly for nearly 1,000 Muslim women;
5. Ending the siege against, and halting any persecution and harassment of, the residents and the annulment of forged warrants of arrests without exception; and
6. Selling of the fixed properties of the residents under UN supervision and reimbursing it to the residents to pay for their security, logistical expenses and transfer to third countries.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
December 21, 2011

http://www.ncr-iran.org/en/ncri-statements/ashraf/11555-mrs-rajavi-welcomes-peaceful-solution-for-camp-ashraf-announces-the-residents-consent-for-transfer-of-400-of-them-to-camp-liberty

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD (AP) – Under international pressure, the Iraqi government on Wednesday backed off its threat to close a refugee camp holding 3,400 Iranian exiles by the end of the month.

Instead, Iraq said it will shut Camp Ashraf sometime in January and insisted that all its residents must leave the country by April. It promised not to deport anyone to Iran.

A spokeswoman for the exiles responded positively to elements of the plan and insisted that the U.S. and U.N. guarantee their safety. The extension of the deadline raises the likelihood of a peaceful resolution to the standoff, heading off a possible bloodbath that many international observers have feared.

The future of Camp Ashraf, home to exiles dedicated to the overthrow of the Iranian regime, has been a sticking point for Iraq’s Shiite-led government, which counts Iran as an ally.

The armed People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran first moved to the camp during the regime of Saddam Hussein, who saw the group as a convenient ally against Tehran. U.S. soldiers disarmed them during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been determined to close down the camp, located in barren terrain northeast of Baghdad about 50 miles from the Iranian border. His government considers the camp, which the exiles vigorously defend with a sophisticated public relations operation in the West, as an affront to Iraq’s sovereignty.

“We don’t want to hand them over to Iran. We don’t want to kill them. We don’t want to oppress them and we don’t want to starve them. But their presence in Iraq is illegal and illegitimate,” al-Maliki said during a press conference Wednesday, three days after the last U.S. soldiers left the country.

The Iraqi government had vowed to shut the camp completely by the end of December and move the residents to another location. That raised concerns that forcibly removing them would result in violence, and the United Nations has been trying to broker a deal.

The U.N. has said that at least 34 people were killed in a raid on the camp by Iraqi security forces last April.

On Wednesday, Iraqi spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the government had worked out a plan to move up to 800 of the residents to a new facility in Baghdad by the end of December. That facility is a former American military base called Camp Liberty.

Al-Dabbagh said the rest of the residents would be relocated as soon as possible in January. Once they have all moved, Camp Ashraf would be closed. He said all the camp’s residents would then be relocated outside of Iraq by no later than April.

In a statement Wednesday, the head of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, Maryam Rajavi, welcomed a peaceful solution for Camp Ashraf. She said she has asked the Ashraf residents to relocate to Camp Liberty provided certain conditions are observed including U.S. and U.N. monitoring.

Al-Dabbagh said the plan calls for camp residents who are citizens of non-Iranian countries to move there eventually. But most of the residents have only Iranian citizenship, so homes in other countries would have to be found for them as well. He said no one will be forcibly sent back to Iran and that they would be treated well at Camp Liberty.

A U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said Wednesday that the process of moving the residents to a new location and eventually resettling them would take time.

“We’re gratified to see that the Iraqi government is going to give it a little bit more time and that they’re particularly cooperating well with the U.N. process,” she said.

For all the discussion over Camp Ashraf, little is known about the inside of the camp or its residents’ day-to-day lives. The Iraqi government generally does not allow journalists to visit.

The road to Camp Ashraf is heavily guarded with signs warning people against taking photographs. The Iraqi Army keeps people from getting too close, and all that’s visible of the camp are towers from which troops monitor the inhabitants.

The residents complain that they don’t get proper medical treatment or enough fuel in the winter. And they accuse the Iraqi government of harassing them through hundreds of loudspeakers stationed around the camp, blaring insults and threats around the clock.

Iraqi guards outside Camp Ashraf say it’s the residents, not the security officials, who hurl insults with loudspeakers. They also contend that the residents regularly attack the soldiers with stones. The guards say the residents have regular access to medical care, and that the only items withheld are possible poisons and explosives.

The guards did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The U.S. State Department has said it does not know of any limits on food or water but that there were concerns over making sure the residents had enough fuel.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/story/2011-12-21/camp-ashraf-iran-iraq-exiles/52146682/1

TORONTO STAR

While the world prepares to celebrate the beginning of the New Year, the people of Camp Ashraf, Iraq, live in imminent peril. At the camp — set up by American forces — 3,400 Iranian refugees are facing prospective massacre at the hands of the Iraqi government. The majority of residents have survived until now because of U.S. protection, but with American forces leaving by the end of the year, the Iraqi government has imposed an arbitrary deadline of Dec. 31 for residents to leave. Those who have nowhere to go will likely be attacked and killed; yet, the international community has been largely silent to their plight.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has designated residents of Camp Ashraf as asylum seekers, and decries its lack of access to them. We know that the residents of Camp Ashraf have faced ongoing harassment and intimidation by both the Iraqi and Iranian governments. Indeed, twice this year alone residents of the camp have been indiscriminately killed and wounded.

The residents are predominately Iranians who oppose Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime and strive for a free and democratic Iran. In what may be viewed as a double death sentence, when the deadline is passed they are likely to be summarily murdered by Iraqi forces, or find themselves forcefully transferred back to Iran — where they will face the same targeted persecution that has met countless others who courageously resist Ahmadinejad’s regime. Meanwhile, reports on the ground indicate that the Iraqi army is gearing up for an attack, raising fears that residents may not even be safe at Ashraf until Dec. 31.

Over the past two weeks, the House of Commons subcommittee on international human rights — of which I am vice-chair — heard chilling testimony from witnesses, including former United States attorney general Michael Mukasey — a staunch advocate for protecting the residents of Camp Ashraf — who stated plainly: “The Iraqi government has made it clear that they will . . . go in there with troops and kill people wholesale. Either that or they will redistribute them within Iraq to locations where they can be disposed of out of sight of the international community.”

We also heard from retired U.S. army colonel Wesley Martin — the first full colonel to command Camp Ashraf — who said of the U.S. war in Iraq: “We’ve made a lot of mistakes, and many people have paid the ultimate price for those mistakes. Unless positive steps are taken very quickly, 3,400 residents of Camp Ashraf will be the next to pick up the tab.”

Indeed, the subcommittee was so moved it adopted a unanimous resolution calling on the Government of Canada — in concert with our international partners — to undertake immediate action to help ensure the lives of those at Camp Ashraf are not in jeopardy.

In particular, we called upon the government of Iraq to extend the deadline for residents to leave beyond Dec. 31 and to allow international observers and aid groups into Camp Ashraf — including to interview residents individually to find out their eligibility for refugee status. Further, we called upon the Government of Canada — in conjunction with our allies — to seek a UN Security Council resolution putting a protective force in place to ensure the safety of refugees at Camp Ashraf; Moreover, the committee called upon the United States to fulfill its moral and legal obligations toward the residents of Camp Ashraf and not forget about those who will be left behind when U.S. troops leave Iraq.

As the world prepares to ring in a new year, let us act to protect the people of Camp Ashraf from certain displacement and likely death and resolve to hold the Government of Iraq to account for its actions. The time to act on Ashraf is now; tomorrow may be too late.

Irwin Cotler is the Member of Parliament for Mount Royal and a former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada. He is vice-chair of the subcommittee on international human rights.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1103599–sounding-the-alarm-on-camp-ashraf

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

A tragedy is presently unfolding in Iraq that makes a mockery of the boast by US defence secretary Leon Panetta that American forces are leaving it a “free, independent and sovereign country”. And in two weeks’ time it seems set to come to a bloody climax.

For some years this column has been drawing attention to the horrible threat that hangs over Camp Ashraf, the once neatly-ordered town on the Iranian border which has, since 2001, been home to 3,400 Iranian exiles, members of the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI), the leading group opposed to the tyranny of the mullahs in Tehran.

In 2004, the Ashraf residents surrendered their arms in return for personal written guarantees of safety from US General David Phillips. But for months now, in anticipation of the last US forces leaving Iraq, Ashraf has been besieged by thousands of Iraqi troops, under the personal direction of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. They are acting in league with gangs of thugs from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Tehran’s equivalent of the old Soviet KGB, responsible for ruthless suppression at home and fostering terrorism abroad.

On a recent visit to Washington, Maliki openly admitted that he was preparing to close Ashraf on December 31, at Tehran’s behest. In April an assault on the town left 36 dead and 11 more have died in incidents since. In a fortnight’s time, Ashraf will be invaded and its residents are likely to be slaughtered on the spot or dispersed around Iraq, to be killed at a later date, or deported to face imprisonment or death in Iran.

No one is more anguished by this betrayal, as he recently indicated in a speech, than General Phillips.

But what is most bewildering about the tragedy is the apparent desire of the US and British governments to condone Maliki’s collaboration with the murderous intentions of Tehran – despite protests from an impressive array of former senior US officials and thousands of American and European politicians, including more than 100 from our own Parliament. Why has our Government been so keen to bow to Iran’s wishes, paving the way for the destruction of Ashraf by those same Revolutionary Guards who recently sacked our embassy in Tehran?

Britain’s opaque part in this story has been as disgraceful as anything in the humiliating record of our involvements in Iraq – which is neither free nor independent, and is less of a sovereign country today than it was when ruled by Saddam Hussein.

http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24214:as-us-troops-leave-iraq-an-assault-is-planned-that-should-shame-us-all

 THE AMERICAN THINKER

StopFundamentalism.com

According to reports from Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, directed by the Iranian government, has unleashed the Moqtada Sadr’s hired mobs against the Iranian dissidents in Camp Ashraf.

Faced with increasing opposition from various political circles in Iraq to his stance toward the Iranian opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq whose members reside in Camp Ashraf, Maliki intends to use Moqtada Sadr’s followers who are paid with Iranian money to pressure the camp’s residents.

Since Maliki entered the Iranian-arranged alliance with Moqtada Sadr in order to secure his position as prime minister, he has increasingly used Sadr’s loyalists as street shock troops to attack Iraqis protesting Maliki’s affiliation with Iran rulers. Use of state-sponsored mobs for fulfilling state’s political and suppressive objectives has its roots in the post-1979 Iran where the government unleashed them to attack opposition rallies and storm foreign embassies.

According to a report by the Associated Press from Iraq, several hundred Iraqi followers of Moqtada Sadr (out of seven million strong population of Baghdad) took part in a gathering on Friday, hoisting his large size pictures and shouting slogan against the MEK. They repeated the Iranian government’s demand for the closing of Camp Ashraf and the group’s forcible relocation to an Iraqi-run detention center. Other reports from Baghdad indicate the heavy presence of the Iranian embassy staff in the state-run rally and Farsi speaking individuals who were organizing the mob.

Last September, the Iranian Fars News Agency affiliated with the country’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, quoted Moqtada Sadr as calling for closure of Camp Ashraf and expulsion of its residents.

On Saturday, December 16, the main Iraqi radio Aswat al-Iraq quoted the spokesman of the Iraqiya opposition coalition as saying that forcible transfer of Camp Ashraf residents to another place in Iraq is “an Iranian intelligence project” Member of Iraq’s Parliament Haidar al-Mulla told Aswat al-Iraq that there “a well-known political agenda, moved by Iranian intelligence to transfer the residents of the camp, which is rejected by us.”  He added that “Iraqiya bloc demanded appointing observers to protect the camp, and to initiate quick actions by the United Nations on this matter.”

Observer fear the sudden emergence of state-sponsored mobs in Baghdad and around Camp Ashraf in recent days, in addition to significant movement of military personnel and vehicles in and around Camp Ashraf, all point to an extensive attack by Maliki against unarmed and defenseless residents of the Camp.

Maliki has so far defied calls by the UN Secretary Genera’s special representative in Iraq, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, European Union, and a bi-partisan group in the US Congress, to postpone the closing of Camp Ashraf so that there is time for the UN refugee agency to process the camp’s 3,400 residents’ applications for political refugee status. His continued defiance of the international community and his countless breach of the human rights of the camp’s residents since 2009, including two large scale massacres in 2009 and 2011, leave no doubt that Maliki’s Iranian-engineered plan to relocate the residents to a so-called safe place is in reality a one-way trip to death chambers for the Iranian dissidents with nearly 1,000 women among them.

http://blogs.stopfundamentalism.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68:iraqs-maliki-unleashes-moqtada-sadrs-hired-mob-against-iranian-exiles-in-camp-ashraf

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Obama risks complicity by ignoring Iran’s threats against Camp Ashraf

Dec. 7 was the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. On that morning in 1941, 353 Japanese fighters, bombers and torpedo planes attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet in two waves. All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, four sunk. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers. In total, 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,402 Americans were killed and 1,282 wounded.

The attack shocked America and led directly to the American entry into World War II. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan. On Aug. 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima, causing the greatest man-made disaster in history. The aim was to stop Japan from warmongering. President Truman, after ordering the dropping of a second bomb over Nagasaki said: “Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.” Are we heading for another disastrous response like that?

This all happened after several years of appeasement, trying to convince Hitler that his best interest was to work “peacefully” with his neighbors. But appeasement only emboldened Hitler to believe he could get away with his crimes, so he committed more.

History seems to be repeating itself, but the question remains: Have our leaders learned their lesson? It is now more than 30 years since the Iranian regime began terrorizing its own people and the world. It started with taking U.S. Embassy personnel hostage. Soon terrorism became a significant pillar of Iran’s foreign policy, backed by funding and training of people to carry their weapons into Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza. The other pillar was bribery and offerings of lucrative oil deals with Western companies. While the West was busy looking for a moderate interlocutor, the regime built its nuclear-weapons program.

After a recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear-program advances, a question was raised in diplomatic circles: What shall we do? The British government took the lead and called for more sanctions. Iran responded in the usual way a bully does: They attacked the British Embassy and took the staff hostage. Foreign Secretary William Hague responded swiftly and closed the Iranian Embassy in London. The bully retreated, proving what we learned in primary school – that the bully is a coward if you stand up to him.

The difference between Iran today and Germany in the 1930s is the existence of an organized opposition to the brutal rulers of Iran. This opposition allows a route to regime change that does not involve direct war.

But appeasers have been at work again. In the hope of containing Iran’s ambitions, they agreed to encumber opposition members by labeling them terrorists, hence extending the repression they endured in Iran to the rest of the world. The People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) challenged this unjust label, and they won court case after court case finally being delisted in the United Kingdom in 2008 and in the European Union in 2009. But the U.S. government has so far refused to abide by the federal appeals court ruling of July 2010 to re-examine the PMOI listing. The court was not convinced of the validity of the reasons given by the State Department. Scores of American generals and former administration officials have called for lifting the ban because it has been used by Iranian regime proxies in Iraq as a justification for two brutal attacks on the residence of PMOI members at Camp Ashraf in Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met President Obama in the Oval Office on Monday. Already calls have been made to Mr. Obama to warn Iraq and Mr. Maliki from attempting to forcefully disperse the residents of the camp in Iraq, which Iraqi forces, aided by Iran, have twice attacked, killing dozens of unarmed residents and wounding hundreds. Iran wants Iraq to do its dirty work of eliminating its organized opposition. Mr. al-Maliki relied on Iran to secure a second term, so he thinks he has to comply. Mr. Obama is the man in position to stop Mr. al-Maliki from committing another crime against humanity.

If he heeds history’s lessons, Mr. Obama will stop Mr. al-Maliki and send a signal to Iran that their bullying is not working. Otherwise, he will find himself complicit in a war crime that Mr. al-Maliki intends to carry out. As human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson said in a meeting in Paris on Dec. 10, silence is complicity in a war crime. I am sure Mr. Obama would not like to go down in history with such a charge on his record.

Lord Corbett of Castle Vale is chairman of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/15/remembering-lessons-of-appeasement/