International human rights organizations report a clear "backsliding" in the country's human rights situation. Images of public hangings and barbaric punishments have shocked the world. The state-run media have reported more than 200 executions in the first five months of this year. In recent years, religious courts have issued two dozen stoning-to-death sentences.

In the past two decades, 120,000 political prisoners, including tens of thousands of women from the Mojahedin, have been executed. Many more have been tortured. Iran's clerical rulers also bear full responsibility for the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, who were killed because they belonged to the Mojahedin Organization. Iran's own state-owned newspapers have revealed Khatami's direct role in the massacre. More recently, they have unveiled the role of a close confidant of Khatami in the export of terrorism and the massacre of 500 pilgrims in Mecca in 1987.

With a record that includes 450 terrorist operations across the world, including hijacking, hostage-taking, bombings and assassinations that have claimed thousands of innocent lives, Iran's religious regime is undoubtedly the global epicenter of Islamic fundamentalism, posing the greatest threat to world peace and security. This regime has rightly been described as the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism."

The mullahs are relentlessly pursuing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, working hard to acquire nuclear bombs, and their arsenals are replete with chemical and biological weapons. Their Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missiles can reach all Middle Eastern and many European capitals.

Khatami's track record shows clearly that he is part and parcel of the ruling clerical hierarchy. There is no possibility of change coming from within the mullahs' regime.

In such circumstances, the European Union has taken an unethical decision by including the People's Mojahedin, Iran's main opposition, in its list of terrorist groups, in return for several trade contracts worth $7 billion. But parliamentary majorities in Britain, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the United States, as well as hundreds of MPs in other European countries, have repeatedly declared support for the Mojahedin as "a legitimate resistance movement' and the "antithesis of fundamentalism and terrorism." Also highlighted has been the prominent role of women in the Mojahedin's leadership, reflecting the movement's democratic credentials and the new perspectives that it offers for fundamental change towards democracy in Iran.

Blaming the victim instead of the villain only encourages the ruling mullahs to shed more blood in Iran and abroad. The terror tag against the Mojahedin is as unjust and unfit as it would have been against the anti-Nazi resistance in war-time Europe, against revolutionary forces in the American War of Independence and against the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. Iran's Resistance Leader Massoud Rajavi made a public declaration on March 20, 2000: "I pledge, on behalf of the Iranian Resistance, that if anyone from our side oversteps the red line concerning absolute prohibition of attacks on civilians and innocent individuals, either deliberately or unintentionally, he or she would be ready to stand trial in any international court and accept any ruling by the court, including the payment of compensation."

We concur with the Resistance's President-elect, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, who said in a message to the big rally by Iranians in Brussels in May 13: ""If the ruling mullahs and their accomplices deny that the vast majority of the Iranian people support this Resistance, why do they refuse to hold a free presidential election or election for a constituent assembly under UN supervision (and on the basis of the principle of popular sovereignty, not clerical supremacy)?"

We believe that fundamentalism and terrorism will continue to threaten the world so long as the mullahs remain in power in Iran. We therefore urge the European Union:

- To remove the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran from its list of terrorist organizations;

- To monitor closely the human rights situation in Iran;

- to introduce an initiative in the next session of the UN General Assembly to bring about the condemnation of the worsening human rights situation and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction by Iran's ruling theocracy;

- To Support the Iranian Resistance's demand for a free and fair election in Iran under UN supervision, and recognize the Iranian people's right to resist this most brutal dictatorship in the contemporary world,

- To defend freedom and human rights and not allow the mullahs in Iran take hostage Europe's democratic values.

We believe that support for the democratic goals of the National Council of Resistance of Iran coalition will contribute to respect for human rights in Iran and promote peace and tranquillity in the region.