The Stop the Bomb coalition
held demonstrations in front of several Swiss embassies in Europe on Monday, to
protest Bern’s support for the Iranian government and (EGL) Elektrizitätsgesellschaft
Laufenburg’s €18 billion-€20b. gas deal with Teheran.
The Stop the Bomb
activists, including exiled Iranians, protested in Austria, Germany, Switzerland
and the United Kingdom.
The Israeli Embassy in Bern blasted EGL for
aiding Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weaponry.
“The reality is that the Swiss
government is failing to understand its responsibility, as a leading Western
country, to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons,” Stop the Bomb’s
UK spokesman, Sam Westrop, told The Jerusalem Post.
“The EGL deal is
indicative of a government that cares little about the Iranian regime’s efforts
to destabilize an entire region and does not realize that the regime poses a
grave threat to the entire Western World.
“This is nothing new, though,”
he continued. “Switzerland has supported Iran’s accession to the World Trade
Organization, sought by Iran for 14 years. This led the Swiss newspaper
SonntagsZeitung to call Switzerland ‘Iran’s most steadfast ally in the Western
world.’” The protests, coupled with US and Israeli criticism of Switzerland’s
refusal to pull the plug on the EGL gas contract, highlighted growing anger with
Switzerland’s policies toward the Islamic Republic.
Shlomit Sufa, a
spokeswoman for the Israeli Embassy in Bern, told the Post that “this deal
supports Iran’s economy at a time when all efforts should be made, together, in
preventing Iran from advancing its nuclear program and achieving nuclear
capacity. This deal stands in stark contrast to the spirit of the increasingly
stringent sanctions imposed on Iran by the Security Council and by others like
the USA and the EU.”
Standing in front of the Swiss Embassy in the heart
of Berlin’s government district along with about 30 other demonstrators, Michael
Spaney, a spokesman for the German branch of Stop the Bomb, called on the Swiss
government to “revoke the multi-billion dollar EGL business deal with the
Iranian regime and adopt the EU and US sanctions against Iran.”
In
response to the protests, Adrian Sollberger, a spokesman for the Swiss Foreign
Ministry, wrote in an e-mail to the Post that “Switzerland implements the UN
sanctions resolutions forcefully, comprehensively and
efficiently.”
Responding to criticisms that Switzerland is undercutting
Western security by failing to adhere to US and EU sanctions, Sollberger wrote
that Switzerland has “committed itself so that unilateral sanctions of important
economic partners cannot be circumvented via Switzerland.”
However, he
noted that “In addition to the US and the EU, only approximately a half dozen
states have agreed to the extensive sanctions against Iran. The majority of the
states of the international community abide – like Switzerland—by the UN
sanctions.”
He termed the EGL deal a “private contract” and not a “state
contract of the Swiss and Iran.”
Sollberger added, “Iran’s entry to the
World Trade Organization is not currently ongoing and Switzerland is not
providing any support.”
Yet critics say the Swiss government is part and
parcel of the EGL-Iran gas contract and is shirking its responsibility to
international security.
Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, who
facilitated the massive gas deal, appeared in 2008 at the EGL signing ceremony
in Teheran with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. EGL is a subsidiary of
the AXPO-Group, an energy utility company that is wholly owned by the cantons of
northeastern Switzerland.
Asked about Switzerland’s business activity
with a government in Iran that denies the Holocaust, Sollberger said, “Any
denial of the Holocaust is unacceptable” and that Switzerland has criticized
Iran’s denial of the Holocaust publicly and bilaterally.
Andreas Benl, a
Stop the Bomb activist from Hamburg, said the Swiss Foreign Ministry had played
down the Holocaust to curry favor with Iranian diplomats. He spoke at the Berlin
demonstration, saying that in 2006 “the Swiss Foreign Ministry had recommended
to Iranian diplomats a seminar on ‘different perspectives’ of the
Holocaust.”
Richard Rogers, a spokesman for EGL, wrote by e-mail to the
Post on Monday that “EGL does not operate a commercial transaction with Iran and
does not maintain a branch office in Iran. In addition, the actual geopolitical
situation does not permit the acquisition of Iranian gas.”
When asked if
EGL plans to terminate its gas contract with Iran, Rogers refused to
answer.
The EGL spokesman also declined to comment on why EGL maintains a
multi-billion euro gas contract with a country that denies the Shoah.
Dr.
Herbert Winter, head of the Swiss Federation of Jewish communities (SIG), told
the Post that the “SIG has repeatedly been disappointed by Switzerland’s
attitude towards Iran and has communicated this unmistakably to the Swiss
Foreign Ministry.
“We cannot understand why Switzerland, a passionate
defender of human rights, is reticent regarding a country like Iran, in which
human rights are constantly mocked and whose president would like to erase a
country, Israel, from the map. Especially at a time when Western states are
endeavoring to oppose Iran’s nuclear threat with strengthened economic
sanctions, we find Switzerland’s attitude worrisome. We can understand why this
attitude causes displeasure abroad.”
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