Austria / Press
Friday, March 29, 2024

Thursday, October 2nd 2008

Turnaround in the Austrian policy towards Iran?

STOP THE BOMB criticises the sponsoring of an Iranian conference by OMV and welcomes statements by the OeVP and the Green Party regarding business with Iran

The Iranian Gas Export Conference is set to take place in Tehran next weekend and the Austrian Oil Company OMV, which is planning a multi-billion Dollar deal with the Iranian regime, appears as a silver-sponsor. Given the withdrawal of SHELL from sponsoring this conference, Simone Dinah Hartmann, spokesperson of the coaltion STOP THE BOMB which is active in speaking out against doing business with Iran, argues: “Unlike SHELL the OMV seems to adhere to direct financing of economical support measures for the Iranian terror regime.”

On the other hand STOP THE BOMB welcomes the statement of Thomas Schmid, speaker of the OeVP parliamentary group who referred to the fact, that his party had suggested to OMV several times to resign from the agreements made with Iran. Likewise STOP THE BOMB appreciates that the foreign policy spokesperson of the Austrian Green Party, Ulrike Lunacek, by this time is not only skeptical about the OMV-deal, as she mentioned before, but rather thinks, it “should be rejected” at the present moment. Simone Dinah Hartmann, however, stresses that the two parties still have to prove, if such statements amount to a substantial change of the policy towards Iran. “Considering the permanently repeated threats against Israel and considering the terror against the Iranian people, Austria’s reaction should imply a consequent policy of imposing sanctions. Furthermore, it would be very interesting to learn about the reasons for the total lack of any comments on this topic by the Social-Democrats.”

STOP THE BOMB declares itself deeply shocked by the election success of the right-wing extremist parties which rank amongst the most vehement supporters of expanding relations with the Holocaust-denying regime in Tehran. Hiwa Bahrami, representative of the Democratic Party Curdistan Iran in Austria, which is part of the STOP THE BOMB-Coalition, refers to the concomitance of racism and collaboration with Islamism: “For these parties the agitation against foreigners and the collaboration with Islamist regimes and movements are not contradictory to each other.” 




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