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| Iraq | |
| Iranian exiles' exit from Iraq hits snag | |
| 2013-05-25 | |
| The State Department's decade-long effort to find a new home for a controversial Iranian opposition group has ground to a near halt only days after the announcement that the exiles had begun moving from Iraq to permanent homes in Europe. Fourteen members of the Mujahedeen Khalq militant group, or MEK, were flown from the outskirts of Baghdad to Albania on May 15, in what was expected to be the first step in the departure of 3,100 members of the group that has long opposed the government of clerics in Tehran and is also at odds with the government of Iraq. But a State Department official told Congress on Wednesday that the group's leadership was not cooperating in the departures, despite the risks to the members' lives in Iraq. Beth Jones, acting assistant secretary of State for Near East Affairs, told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee Wednesday that although U.S. officials have worked hard to persuade the group's leadership to cooperate in the departures, "very few have been allowed to move." She appealed for cooperation.
But though the group's leadership signed an agreement with the U.N. and Iraq last year to abandon their longtime base, Camp Ashraf, in Diyali province, the leadership seems reluctant to move the group's members from Iraq. They apparently prefer that the members remain and continue their effort to overthrow the Iranian government, diplomats say. | |
| Posted by:tipper |