Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-13-Speech-4-137"
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"en.20050113.11.4-137"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the European Union and Iran have returned to the negotiating table in order to resume talks on a joint trade and cooperation agreement. The reason for this, or so we are told, is that Iran has now agreed to allow monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency and has put a stop, for the time being, to the enrichment of uranium. I ask myself how it is that Iran’s stance in the so-called ‘nuclear controversy’ can be the only criterion that the Commission considers when deciding to restart the negotiations.
There are still serious problems where human rights are concerned, and every one of the European Union’s trade and cooperation agreements contains unequivocal statements on the human rights chapters on which cooperation depends. The Commission’s attitude gives the impression that human rights have, overnight, ceased to be a problem in Iran. This resolution presses home the point that there has been no improvement in the human rights situation in Iran. Sharia law continues to be imposed with its full rigour; executions, stonings, torture and arbitrary arrests continue day by day. The work of human rights activists and journalists has become even more difficult and even more hazardous; the Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi has again been summoned before a court.
These facts lead me to regard the European Union as acting utterly deceitfully in resuming negotiations with the Iranian Government at this stage. I appeal both to the Commission and to the Council to take their own demands seriously and not to allow themselves to be bought – in the truest sense of the word. Rather than negotiating with Iran on cooperation in economic policy matters, the European Union should be sitting down with those forces that are actually doing something for democracy, to change Iran, to make it democratic. I think that what Mr Gahler came out with was another attempt at coupling one thing with another, so let me ask him, in plain language, to name one country that behaves in the way Iran does. If we are not to suspend trade relations with Iran, with what country does he want us to suspend them?"@en1
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