BRUSSELS,
June 11, 2014 -- In a press conference in Brussels on
Wednesday, prominent European politicians, joined by a former Prime
Minister of Algeria, announced the formation of a new non-governmental
organization with the mission of improving the political and human
rights situation in Iraq.
The
press conference, chaired by the President of the European Parliament's
Delegation for Relations with Iraq, Struan Stevenson, strongly
condemned the human rights violations in Iraq, the executions and
massacre of Iranian refugees in Camps Ashraf and Liberty, and stressed
that the main cause of these problems has been the monopoly of power in
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's hands in the past 8 years and the
unprecedented infiltration of Iraq by Iran and its terrorist Qods Force.
The announcement was made after insurgents captured the city of Mosul in Iraq on Tuesday and Tikrit on Wednesday.
The
Shiite government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki claims that
the attacks have been carried out by terrorist groups, namely the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. But the participants at the press
conference disputed this claim vigorously, calling the recent actions
part of a popular uprising, which Maliki has been attempting to
suppress. They stressed that Maliki has resorted to the indiscriminate
killing of innocent civilians with barrel bombs and missile strikes and
repeated air attacks on insurgent-held areas, and that these operations
are carried out under the command and monitoring of the Quds Force.
At
the press conference for the newly formed NGO, the European Iraqi
Freedom Association (EIFA), Sid Ahmed Ghozali - former Prime Minister of
Algeria, Alejo Vidal-Quadras - Vice President of the European
Parliament, Stephen Hughes, Vice-President of the Socialists-Democrats
group and former MEP Paulo Casaca, an expert on Iraq, pointed out that
Maliki misleadingly pretends that the terrorists and ISIL have taken
control of Nineveh province in order to pave the way for bombings and
missile attacks as well as to find an excuse for the U.S. and the
Iranian regime's military intervention in Iraq.
The
participants strongly criticized the support of Western governments,
particularly the United States, for Maliki and called for an end to arms
shipments to the Maliki government, coming from the US and Russia,
which help him to suppress the popular uprising.
Representatives
of various Iraqi factions reiterated that recent elections were neither
free nor fair and all of them have been defrauded by Maliki and the
Iranian regime since December 2012.
Participants
in Wednesday's press conference left no doubt as to the specific goals
of their newly formed NGO, noting that "the crisis of Iraq can only be
resolved by an urgent change of leadership and the ousting of Maliki,
combined with the complete eviction of the Iranian regime from Iraq."
The
Board of EIFA includes John Bruton - former Prime Minister of Ireland,
Geir Haarde - former Prime Minister of Iceland, Giulio Terzi - former
Foreign Minister of Italy, Lord Carlile - former National Security
Advisor to the UK Government.
iraq