Flagrant violations of human rights, widespread arrests, execution of dissidents and religious minorities and crackdown on anti-government protests are continuing in Iran. The Tehran regime has also test-fired a missile with a range of 1,300 km.
In such circumstances, shaking hands with the theocratic regime's rulers runs counter to the Iranian people's supreme interests and will only embolden the mullahs to persist in their atrocities against the people of Iran and in export of terrorism and fundamentalism. The people of Iran will have to pay the price of such ties with even more prisoners and martyrs.
During Khatami's tenure, more than 250 people have been executed in public, seven people stoned to death and 27 Iranian dissidents assassinated abroad. At the same time, one after the other, mullahs' leaders have reaffirmed that the fatwa to murder Rushdie cannot be revoked.
Beset by an internal power struggle, irremediable economic crisis and unable to confront the popular Resistance, the clerical regime is passing through its last phase. Investing in this regime is like betting on a losing horse. Providing aid to the medieval mullahs only hurts the feelings of the Iranian people and casts a shadow over future bilateral relations.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran calls on all those who cherish freedom, intellectuals and human rights advocates in France to express their opposition to the French Foreign Minister's visit and not allow it to become a dark page in the history of France's relations with the people of Iran.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
August 3, 1998
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