EU postpones decision on banned Iranian group

By Ingrid Melander

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union postponed a decision on whether to remove an Iranian opposition group from its blacklist of terrorist organisations, diplomats said on Wednesday, ahead of a visit to Iran by its foreign policy chief.

EU foreign ministers had been due to review the list at a meeting in Luxembourg next Monday, but the item has been dropped pending a decision by the British parliament on taking the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) off the British blacklist, one EU diplomat said.

The postponement averts a potential clash when EU foreign policy Javier Solana travels to Tehran on Friday to present a revised offer from the world's six major powers of cooperation if Iran suspends sensitive nuclear work.

"We are waiting for the British parliament because the EU decision is based on it," the EU diplomat said.

The political arm of PMOI said on Wednesday that Iran was threatening to bog down talks on its nuclear programme unless the EU kept a ban on the Iraq-based guerrilla group.

The PMOI won a seven-year legal battle last month when three senior judges at England's Court of Appeal dismissed a government challenge to an earlier ruling that the authorities were wrong to ban the group.

"Iran has been using all diplomatic and economic leverages to prevent the implementation of the court ruling," said Mohammad Mohaddessin, a senior member of the PMOI's political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

"Tehran's plan is to pretend that if the PMOI was removed from the list, the chances of success in the nuclear negotiations will be much more difficult," Mohaddessin told a news conference.