Iran in talks threat over EU terror list: exiles

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Iran is threatening to bog down talks on its nuclear program unless the European Union keeps a ban on an Iranian opposition group, the political arm of the group said on Wednesday.

The People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) won a seven-year legal battle last month when three senior judges at Britain's Court of Appeal dismissed a government challenge to an earlier ruling that Britain was wrong to ban the group.

The EU is to shortly review its own list of terrorist organizations and decide whether to keep banning the PMOI.

"Iran has been using all diplomatic and economic leverages to prevent the implementation of the court ruling," said Mohammad Mohaddessin, from 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. "I hope the Iranian regime will not succeed in this very dirty deal."

Mohaddessin said Iran had been targeting France in particular, and had held numerous meetings with French diplomats in Tehran and Paris.

An EU Presidency spokeswoman said the process of review of the EU terror list was ongoing but declined to comment on what the outcome could be or on the NCRI's accusations.

EU foreign ministers were expected to review the list next Monday, but the decision has been postponed to wait for Britain's parliament to take a final decision on taking PMOI out of the British black list, another EU diplomat said.

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

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is expected to travel to Tehran in a few days to offer economic and other benefits to Iran if it gives up sensitive atomic work.

The PMOI began as a leftist-Islamist opposition to the late shah of Iran but fell out with Shi'ite clerics who took power after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Western analysts say it has little support inside Iran because it joined Iraqi forces during the 1980-88 war between the two neighbors.

The group, which exposed Iran's covert nuclear program in 2002, is also banned by the United States.

In December 2006, an EU court annulled the bloc's decision to have PMOI on the blacklist, ruling it had not given the group a fair hearing or adequate reasons.

But the EU kept its ban, saying the group had been put on an updated version of the list and been given the reasons.

Removal from the EU list would unblock frozen assets of the

PMOI.

(Reporting by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

((ingrid.melander@reuters.com; 32 2 287 6830; Reuters

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