BRIEF ON IRAN No. 255 Tuesday, September 19, 1995 Representative Office of The National Council of Resistance of Iran 3421 M Street NW #1032 Washington, DC 20007 13 New Members for the NCR, From statemnet by the Secretariate of the NCR - Paris, September 18 On Sunday, September 17, Mrs. Mahvash Sepehri, the NCR's senior secretary, announced new membership of 13 political and cultural personalities in the National Council of Resistance. Their membership was ratified according to the NCR's rules and constitution, and in a refrandum from all memebers. Among the new members are conductors, composers, a musician, a poet, a sculptor, a Jewish activist, a computer scientist, and a sociologist... NCR Calls Beijing Conference a Sucess, Statement by the NCR Committee on Women's Rights and Freedoms, September 15 At the end of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Mrs. Maryam Matine-Daftari, chairwoman of the NCR Committee on Women's Rights and Freedoms, called the conference a "success." Mrs. Matine-Daftari stressed that this unprecedented forum brought to light the consequences of Islamic fundamentalism, advocated by the Iranian regime, in subverting the principle of equality and giving way to depriving women from their most rudimentary rights to employment, inheritance, guardianship, marriage and divorce as well as political leadership. She said: "The Tehran regime's failure to undermine the universality of human rights and equality of men and women in order to derail the conference from its objectives was a major victory for the Iranian women, the prime victims of the mullahs' regime. "This conference prevented the Islamic Republic of Iran from long sought international justification for their stoning of women to death, compulsory dress code, and whipping women in public which are systematically carried out in Iran under the guise of Islam." Mrs. Matine-Daftari who headed a delegation of Iranian women NGOs in exile to the conference reiterated that the international community should provide appropriate safeguards and mechanisms to secure and scrutinize the implementation of the sacred principle of "women's rights is human rights" in view of the fundamentalist regime's retrogressive practices. More Corruption in Mullahs' Regime, Reuters, September 18 Iran is to try a former head of its state tobacco company for taking millions of dollars in commissions from foreign firms, a newspaper said on Monday. The daily Kayhan quoted an unnamed court official as saying Ali Asghar Samet, head of the state monopoly tobacco firm for over eight years, confessed after his arrest in 1993 that he had received $7 million and $8 million German marks in commissions... Authorities have confiscated 700 million rials ($233,300 at the official exchange rate) from the defendants and returned to Iran $2.6 million, five million marks and 622,000 pounds held in Samet's bank accounts abroad, it said. The case follows several trials for fraud and embezzlement at Iranian state agencies and banks in the past few months which have featured prominently in the press and caused a wide public outcry. GCC Alliance Discusses Problems With Iran, Reuters, September 18 Six Gulf Arab foreign ministers began two days of talks on Monday on internal instability in Iraq and often tense ties with the non-Arab power, Iran... Sheikh Mohammad [of Bahrain, the current Chair of GCC] said "Among the most important requirements for the security and stability of the region'' is for all regional states to abide by the principles of good neighborliness and non-interference in internal affairs. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Tehran, several GCC states have at separate times accused Iran of trying to export its brand of fundamentalist Islam to regional states. Sheikh Mohammad reiterated a call on Iran to find a final solution to its dispute with the UAE over three strategic Gulf islands "belonging to the UAE,'' adding that the "occupation of the lands of other by force was not acceptable.''