Munich - Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on
Saturday rejected European Union demands for a halt to the execution
of opposition demonstrators in his country, saying that the condemned
people were criminals.
On Friday, the EU's foreign-policy director, Catherine Ashton,
urged Iran to halt all executions, and in particular the judicial
killing of nine opposition demonstrators who were condemned to death
earlier in the week.
Most Iranians accepted the result of the June presidential
election, 'except very few people who started violations, who did
crimes, who burned houses and buses and damaged anything in the
streets. Are you tolerant in your countries to violations and
crimes?' Mottaki asked the prestigious Munich Security Conference.
'When crime happens, that is not protest. Protest yes, but
violation and crimes nobody will allow,' Mottaki said during a
midnight debate with Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.
On Friday, Ashton issued a statement calling on Iran to stop all
executions and accusing it of intimidating protestors.
Bildt backed up that call, asking Mottaki to promise that the nine
condemned people would not be executed before the anniversary
celebrations of Iran's revolution, set for Thursday, as part of a
plan to overawe government critics.
'There are widespread beliefs that there is the intention to
execute them before the anniversary to prevent demonstrations ...
That would clearly have the most detrimental effect on the other
aspects of the (EU-Iran) relationship,' Bildt said.
But Mottaki waved away those comments, insisting that President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the election by some 11 million votes.
That remark elicited boos and hisses from some in the audience,
who believe that the election was rigged.
Mottaki then pointed out that the Iranian election had seen a
turnout of some 85 per cent, while last year's elections to the
European Parliament saw turnout of under 25 per cent in some EU
member states.
'We cannot have our own definitions, such as first- and
second-class democracy,' he said.
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