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Iran exiles rally against nukes outside UN watchdog
base Thu. 24 Nov 2005
Iran Focus
 Vienna, Nov. 24 – Several thousand Iranian
exiles braved the winter snow and rallied on Thursday outside the
headquarters of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog in Vienna
to call for the immediate referral of Tehran’s
suspected atomic weapons file to the Security Council to face economic
sanctions and a comprehensive oil embargo.
Organisers estimated the banner-waving crowd at
more than 2,500, as representatives of member states of the International
Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) board of governors met in a
behind-closed-doors session to discuss how to tackle the Islamic Republic’s
nuclear threat.
Several speakers addressed the rally including Austrian Member of the
European Parliament Karin Resetarits.
Two former Iranian nuclear scientists who defected from Tehran
several years ago, Alireza Assar
and Manouchehr Fakhimi,
warned the international community in their addresses during the rally that
the world faced a serious threat of being confronted with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Demonstrators holding up banners reading, “Refer mullahs’ nuclear file to
UN Security Council” and “No deals with the mullahs, no nukes for the
mullahs”, chanted slogans against Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“Ahmadinejad is a terrorist”, they chanted.
A statement was also read out to applause on behalf of Maryam
Rajavi, whose National Council of Resistance of
Iran (NCRI) was the first to blew the whistle on Iran’s clandestine nuclear
program in August 2002, in which she urged the IAEA board of governors to
refer the clerical establishment nuclear dossier to the Security Council
and expel it from international bodies before it was too late.
A giant replica missile with the logo of the Islamic Republic was paraded
on the back of a truck at the demonstration.
Haleh Farahani, a
36-year-old mother of two, said that she had travelled
from Germany to register
her voice against the reported decision by the European Union to refrain
from its demand that Tehran
be hauled before the UN for recommencing uranium enrichment activities at
one of its sites. “Iranian people are against nuclear weapons but the
regime wants to make them to ensure that it stays in power and to threaten
the whole world”.
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