Belgium’s foreign minister Karel de Gucht condemned Thursday a recent meeting between Maryam Rajavi, a leader of the Paris-based terrorist grouplet MKO and a few Belgian senators in Brussels. <\/p>\n
Belgian news agency, BELGA, quoted de Gucht saying that such a meeting weakens Belgium’s position in the fight against terrorism. <\/p>\n
De Gucht regretted that some personalities judged opportune to meet Mrs. Rajavi who appeared to represent a peaceful movement but her movement, said de Gucht, is a cover up for the MKO, a group which has been since 2002 on the US terrorist list and also on the EU terror list. <\/p>\n
De Gucht noted that the MKO has committed terror acts in Iran and elsewhere and practiced torture. <\/p>\n
The minister was answering to a question in the Senate by senator Francois-Xavier De Donnea regarding the meeting on Tuesday between Rajavi in a side salon of the Senate with the president of the Senate Mrs. Anne-Marie Lizin and five other senators. <\/p>\n
Lizin had underlined that the meeting with Rajavi was unofficial. <\/p>\n
De Gucht said that as a consequence of the meeting the Iranian government has postponed the acceptance of the credential letter of the new Belgian ambassador to Tehran. <\/p>\n
He said it is essential to reinforce the role of the civil society and contacts with the opposition but in a sensible manner. <\/p>\n
In this context, he said, Belgium cannot permit the wastage of its diplomatic credit through gestures which do not serve the cause of democracy and undermines the coherence of Belgium’s policy.<\/p>\n
IRNA – October26, 2006<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Belgian news agency, BELGA, quoted de Gucht saying that such a meeting weakens Belgium’s position in the fight against terrorism. De Gucht regretted that some personalities judged opportune to meet Mrs. Rajavi who appeared to represent a peaceful movement but her movement, said de Gucht, is a cover up for the MKO, a group which has been since 2002 on the US terrorist list<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[253],"tags":[83],"module":[67],"ctype":[17],"blog":[127],"class_list":["post-856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belgium","tag-mko-news","module-news","ctype-story","blog-irna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}