Free Self-Sacrifice by Struan Stevenson

This was a new delegation, and when the leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group approached me initially, he offered me the choice of chairing either the Iraq Delegation or the Canada Delegation. I told him that Canada was a lovely country that I had enjoyed visiting previously, but chairing such a delegation would be less challenging and less rewarding than taking on the more onerous task of Iraq. I duly found myself presiding over the first meeting of the new delegation, to which the Iraqi Ambassador to the EU had also been invited. Pleasantries were exchanged all round, and I pledged to do my best to improve relations between the EU and Iraq.
    On Monday 26 October 2009 I set off to Jordan, where I had arranged a series of high-level meetings in Amman with the Foreign Minister, the Director for European Affairs in the Foreign Ministry, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Minister for Media and Communications. I had also arranged for key political leaders from Iraq to travel to Amman to brief me on the current escalating insurgency inside Iraq.
    My first meeting in Amman was with a group of Iraqis representing the National Dialogue Front, a secular parliamentary group. There had been a horrific bomb outrage just on the edge of the Green Zone in Baghdad the previous day, killing 150 people and wounding over 500. They told me that this outrage was certainly politically motivated and a reaction to the formation of the new coalitions in readiness for the forthcoming general election in January 2010. Although it was quickly blamed on Sunni insurgents, such sophisticated explosive devices as were used in the attack could only have been smuggled into this high security zone with the knowledge and connivanceof the Iranian Qods Force that roamed throughout Baghdad with impunity, as they told me. The massacre was almost certainly motivated by Iran and aimed at sending a warning to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that he should re-join the pro-Iranian Shiite coalition with Hakim, Badr and Muqtada al-Sadr, in order to secure power again following the election.
    They told me that current tactics used by the pro-Iranian factions were to threaten people not to vote in the elections and, through fear and intimidation, dramatically to reduce the number of people who would participate. This would then leave hundreds of thousands of blank ballot papers that could be falsified. All civil servants and police and military personnel were being ordered to vote for the governing Shiite parties, they informed me.
    On the question of Iranian meddling in Iraq, they were adamant that Iranian infiltration to the very top of government had taken place to an unprecedented extent. Two of Prime Minister al-Maliki’s senior staff were Iranian. His private jet and the entire crew were supplied by Iran. They also pointed out that many government ministers in Iraq had dual nationality with other countries, in order that if any were accused of corruption they could quickly escape arrest and flee from Iraq.
    Later that morning I met with Dr Nabil al-Sharif, Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications, and Ahmad S. al-Hassan, Director of European Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dr Sharif said that Jordan had gone out of its way to support Iraq. King Abdullah was the only Arab leader so far to have visited Iraq since the war. As far as the forthcoming Iraqi elections were concerned, Dr Sharif said that it was essential that all of the political factions were included in the political process. No one must feel left out.
    I raised the question of Camp Ashraf with the ministers and referred to the July 2009 massacre (see Chapter 15 ). I said that there was a new threat from Maliki to displace the 3,400 refugees to the desert in southern Iraq, and that this would create the conditions for another massacre. Mr Hassan suggested that perhaps I could resolve the situation by offering all 3,400 PMOI refugees visas to