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To: NOW who wrote (18425)	4/30/2003 6:01:32 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 89467

April 16, 2003 Bombing wipes out camps of Iran rebels From Michael Theodoulou in Nicosia COALITION aircraft have destroyed camps in Iraq of the People’s Mujahidin (MKO), the main Iranian armed opposition group, British diplomats in Tehran said yesterday. The group, regarded by Britain, the United States and Iran as a terrorist organisation, has been left in disarray by the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Its members are said to be “fleeing in all directions” and no longer represent a fighting force. The airstrikes against the MKO camps are an unexpected boon to Iran, which has been concerned by a war that has led thousands of American troops to its western border. There has been speculation that Tehran had been assured that if it stayed out of the war, the MKO would be sidelined in a post-Saddam Iraq. However, a senior diplomat in Tehran said that there was no “formal agreement”. The MKO would have been targeted because of its alliance with Saddam. Unconfirmed reports have alleged that Saddam hid weapons of mass destruction at secret sites used by MKO fighters. The group, whose political arm has long sought support in Washington, has pledged its neutrality in the war, but that failed to sway the allies. “The MKO is not only a terrorist organisation according to Britain, but they were also part of the Iraqi Armed Forces,” Andrew Greenstock, a spokesman for the British Embassy in Tehran, said. Heavy air raids struck MKO bases on April 4 and 5, causing a “handful of casualties”, another British diplomat said. The MKO had thousands of well armed troops stationed at military bases near the Iranian border. They used to make cross-border raids into Iran and were responsible for attacks in Tehran. Iran would counter with airstrikes. “The MKO’s support network with Saddam’s forces has gone and there’s not much of their infrastructure left,” the British diplomat said. He also rejected as “propaganda” MKO claims that Iranian forces had crossed the Iraqi border, killing 18 of its fighters. The National Council of Resistance, the MKO’s political wing, runs a well funded public relations machine in Europe and the United States. It had won support in Congress by portraying itself as a legitimate resistance movement and a democratic alternative to Iran’s Islamic rulers. Ordinary Iranians have never forgiven it for fighting with Iraq during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. The MKO was also resented by many Iraqis for helping Saddam to crush a popular uprising after of the 1991 Gulf War. The US State Department, which first branded the MKO a “terrorist” group in 1997, noted that the organisation has a history “studded with anti-Western activity”. It evolved from a group of Marxist and Islamic radicals supporting the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It was held responsible for killing several US military personnel and civilians in the late 1970s and also backed the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, berating the regime for “capitulating to imperialism” when the captives were freed. After playing a key role in the revolution that toppled the pro-American Shah, it broke with the late Ayatollah Khomeini and was thrown out of Iran. In the mid-1980s the group allied itself to Saddam, who recognised it as the legitimate representative of Iran. The future of several thousand MKO fighters thought to be in Iraq is uncertain. Many were said to have left before the war or to have defected. Iranian officials called on them last month to abandon their “movement’s terrorist leaders” and to return to Iran, saying that the Islamic Republic would forgive those foot soldiers who repented. But there would be no forgiveness for the group’s leaders. Support for the group in Congress had long dismayed Iranian officials. They said that the MKO presence in Iraq, where it was sheltered and financed by Saddam, was the US’s only proven link between the Iraqi dictator and international terrorism. But defenders in Washington of the obscure Iranian rebel group argue still that the decision to put the MKO on the State Department’s terrorist list in 1997 came from an attempt to curry favour with Iran’s reformist President Khatami. More than 70 members of the group, some carrying refugee cards from France, Germany, Canada and the United States, were said last night to be stuck on the border with Jordan. Jordanian authorities were waiting for a commitment from relevant embassies to repatriate the refugees before allowing them to cross the border. timesonline.co.uk