Dissident declined to meet White House officials
Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji declined to meet White House officials
during a visit to the US, he has told the BBC. Mr. Ganji said he had
been invited to discuss the current situation in Iran. The White House
declined to comment. He said he rejected the offer because he believed
current US policies could not help promote democracy in Iran.
In a speech last week in Washington DC, he also criticised US policy
in Iraq, saying: "You cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking
it". He added that the war in Iraq had helped Islamic fundamentalism and
hampered the democracy movement in the region. A group of Iranian
dissidents met State Department official Nicholas Burns and Elliot
Abrams, an adviser to the National Security Council, while Mr. Ganji was
in Washington last week.
Mr. Ganji said he believed such meetings would undermine the
credibility of the Iranian opposition. However, Mr. Ganji added that if
Iranian opposition were united and they had a recognised leadership,
they could negotiate with US officials to find the best ways of helping
promote democracy and human rights in Iran.
Hunger strike
He said he was in the United States not as a leader of Iran's
democracy movement, but as a journalist who wanted to draw international
attention to the plight of people in Iranian jails.
The highlight of Mr Ganji's visit to the United States was a
three-day hunger strike in front of United Nations headquarters in New
York. Mr. Ganji had staged a hunger strike for several weeks when he was
in Iran's notorious Evin prison in Tehran.
He was joined in his New York protest by tens of other Iranians who
went on strike to campaign against what they called the arbitrary
detention of political activists and intellectuals in Iran.
His American visit coincides with renewed pressure on Iran for its
support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and its rejection of calls to stop
uranium enrichment.
In a speech at Washington's Georgetown University, he said he
believed Iran's nuclear programme was not in its national interest. Mr.
Ganji was arrested in 2000 after returning from a conference in Berlin.
He was accused of having "damaged national security" and sentenced to
six years in jail.
In July 2005, President Bush called on Iran to release Mr. Ganji
"immediately and unconditionally". He was released in March 2006, in
poor health as a result of his lengthy hunger strike against prison
conditions. On Monday, Mr. Ganji delivered a speech in New York to a
gathering organised by the International Pen Association, which
campaigns for writers' freedom. He says he will return to Iran once he
finishes his tour of the US and Europe.
(BBC News)
|