No dialogue with the Iranian regime!

For support of the opposition!

Saturday, October 25th 2008, 9:30 a.m. (please be on time)
in front of Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wollzeile 27, 1010 Vienna

On October 25, Austrian president Heinz Fischer and Austrian federal minister of science and research, Johannes Hahn, join in the ceremonial act "35 Jahre Dialoginitiative St. Gabriel", where the former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami also will attend. In the last years, conferences repeatingly take place within the framework of this dialogue initiative, where a platform was offered to representatives of the Iranian dictatorship. At one of the Iranian-Austrian conferences, the Iranian ambassador at that time, Ebrahim Rahim Pour, could manifest his interest in "building a better, free and happy world for the mankind", which did not meet perhaps objection in view of the terror practice of the Islamic Republic, but was completed by the wish of Austrian cardinal Franz Koenig for a further "reinforcement of mutual respect".

We protest instantly against courting the former Iranian president by Austrian president Fischer and the Austrian government. Khatami does not personify the Iranian opposition but a wing of the Islamic Republic. The different fractions within the Iranian dictatorship are - how it was worded by the Supreme Religious Leader Khamenei - like two wings which will bring the regime to its goals. The main concern of the conflict between the different fractions of the mullahs in Iran is how and not if the totalitarian Islamic character of the state can be preserved. Ideology and structure of the Islamic Republic Iran do not allow democratic reforms within the existing political system.

The secret nuclear program was also run under Khatamy's presidency. The Iranian student's movement was oppressed massively, also the free labor unions. Also during his tenure no arrangements were made to call to account the persons responsible for the state terrorism of which, for instance, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan became a victim in Vienna. Khatami vindicates death penalty for homosexuality like it is stated by Iranian law. The former Iranian president came to defense of Roger Garaudy, the French denier of Holocaust, when Garaudy was accused in France. He steadily qualifies zionism as "continuation of fascism", and during all the eight years of his presidency, Iranian support was going on for the djihadistic Shi'ite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon, which wants to destroy Israel.

There must not be a basis for conversations with a murdering regime. The minimum condition for a dialogue would be not to murder one's opponents. This basis for conversations is not existing in Iran since 1979. The regime has executed ten thousands of its opponents and prompted to murder many members of the opposition abroad. A dialogue with representatives of the regime, no matter to which of the wings the interlocutors belong, stabs in the back of the Iranian secular opposition, which fights against the Islamic Republic since almost 30 years.

We demand the immediate stop of the dialogue with representatives of the Iranian regime, on political, scientific, religious and economic levels. The alternative to conversations with representatives of a murdering dictatorship is the strict support of the democratic and secular opposition as well as extensive political and economic sanctions.

STOP THE BOMB - Coalition against the Iranian extermination program
Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan