By Martin Banks - 2nd November 2011
We are pleased the trip has been cancelled
Jonathan Weckerle
A controversial parliamentary delegation trip to Iran has been cancelled.
A delegation consisting of five MEPs was due to pay an official visit to Iran this week. The five-day trip should have concluded on Friday.
It was scheduled to be led by the chairwoman of parliament's delegation for relations with Iran, Traja Cronberg, a Finnish Green member.
It is believed that other members would have included German MEP Kurt Lechner and German Green Party member Barbara Lochbihler, a former chairperson of the Iran delegation.
However, the trip has been cancelled at short notice by the Iranians. No formal explanation was given but the planned visit had been roundly criticised by several EU parliamentarians.
Iran has been condemned by the EU and the rest of the international community over its nuclear programme and has also come under fire recently over allegations of a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has called for a "very strong message" to be sent to Iran while the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton expressed "grave concern" about the plot.
The decision to pull the plug on the MEP visit to Tehran was welcomed by campaigners who had lobbied for it to be called off.
The European coalition group, "Stop the Bomb", had appealed to parliament's president Jerzy Buzek to denounce what it called "the renewed courting of the Iranian regime".
Speaking on Wednesday, Jonathan Weckerle, from the group, told this website, "We are pleased the trip has been cancelled. The MEPs had no right to be going to Iran in the first place."
The group's spokesperson, Simone Hartmann, said it opposed "any steps that could be understood as support by the Iranian regime".
Hartmann said, "Instead of giving legitimacy to the Iranian regime by visiting them and offering dialogue - a legitimacy which the regime does not offer its own people, the European parliament should be calling for tougher sanctions especially against Iran's Central Bank and its oil and gas exports."
She added, "The Iranian nuclear programme and the export of terrorism have to be stopped."
German-Iranian author Saba Farzan had also criticised the trip, branding it as a "slap in the face of every freedom loving Iranian".
"The only right position to take was to cancel the visit and reside with the freedom loving people of Iran."
