Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade

EU Scrutiny Reports 2012: Discussion with Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

3:30 pm

Mr. David Cooney:

I do not have it in front of me. Mr. Kelly might be able to come back to the Deputy on that. If Iran is ever on the agenda of the EU Foreign Affairs Council, the People's Mujahidin of Iran always has a big demonstration in Brussels. It is able to mobilise people in the expatriate community. We have expressed concerns about it in the past. It has been guilty of a number of very violent outrages and deaths. It does not command any real support within Iran. That said, there is a particular situation with regard to Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where we and other members of the international community have been active in trying to deal with Iranian refugees based in Iraq who are opposed to the Iranian regime but no longer have the support of the Iraqi authorities. We are active on that front but, as an organisation, while it represents a strand of opinion in the expatriate community, we do not regard it as providing the future course for Iran. One cannot get away from the fact that the regime government in Tehran still enjoys a substantial degree of support from within the country and we feel the solution to Iran's difficulty rests within the country through reconciliation and a more open and democratic system.

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