Commenting on this report, NCR's Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Mr. Mohammad Mohaddessin, said: This announcement is nothing but a hollow promise by the clerical regime to prevent the adoption of a strongly-worded resolution condemning the violations of human rights in Iran. As the Human Rights Commission was about to address the issue of human rights in Iran in April 1998 in Geneva, the clerical regime resorted to the same scheme, making the same false promises to thwart the adoption of a resolution by the Commission.
Mr. Mohaddessin emphasized: In an obvious blackmail, the regime's officials would agree to the Special Representative's visit only if the Commission and the Special Representative would make guarantees in advance to remove the Iranian regime from the list of countries under consideration for human rights violations.
The fact is that Professor Copithorne has not been allowed to travel to Iran for the past three years.
Parallel to these lies, the mullahs' regime has struck deals with some European countries offering them economic concessions in an effort to undermine the resolution being considered by the current session of the UN General Assembly, and fulfill the ominous intentions of the theocracy ruling Iran. Another one of the regime's ploys was the Judiciary's announcement of the formation of bogus associations such as "Society of Iranian Jurists in Defense of Human Rights," which began its activities just last month solely in connection with the UN General Assembly session.
NCR's Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman condemned any deals on human rights and stressed that the undue optimism expressed in the UNHRC resolution last April about the regime's "positive positions" is one of the main causes of the deterioration of the human rights situation in Iran in recent months.
Mr. Mohaddessin pointed to the escalation of executions, deaths under torture, stoning, repression of women, ethnic and religious minorities during Khatami's tenure and urged the UN General Assembly to adopt a strongly-worded and transparent resolution.
"Such unjustified concessions to this anti-human regime have assured the mullahs that world community will not hold them accountable for their atrocities. The Iranian people will doubtless have to pay for such placating policies with their flesh and bone," he added.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
November 6, 1998
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