July 17, 2008	Thursday	Rajab 13, 1429

BRUSSELS: The European Union said on Wednesday it was keeping a key Iranian opposition group on its list of banned terrorist movements, days before it leads major power talks with Iran over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme.

The People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) had called on the 27-member EU to remove it from the blacklist after the British parliament last month upheld a court ruling that its inclusion on a list of banned groups in Britain was wrong.

But the EU, in a decision slipped out without fanfare, said it saw no grounds for amending the list of 48 groups subject to asset freezes and other sanctions in Europe.

“Consequently, the Council has decided to maintain those persons, groups and entities on the list,” the decision published in its Official Journal said. The decision to keep the PMOI on the list was rubber-stamped by EU agriculture ministers who met in Brussels on Tuesday.

A French source said Paris — a key player in Iranian diplomacy and holder of the bloc’s rotating presidency — came forward with grounds for it to be maintained on the list. The PMOI began as a leftist-Islamist opposition to the late shah of Iran but fell out with clerics who took power after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Western analysts say it has little support inside Iran because it joined Iraqi forces during the 1980-88 war between the two neighbours. The group, which exposed Iran’s covert nuclear programme in 2002, is also banned by the United States.

EU officials said the timing of the decision was not related to efforts to persuade Iran to halt uranium enrichment which the West suspects is aimed at acquiring the atom bomb.

A spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political arm of the PMOI, denounced the EU decision to keep the group on its terrorism list.—Reuters