Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs - 7th November 2006 - Iran and Related Matters

Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs - 7th November 2006 - Iran and Related Matters
Norris: It is always very welcome when either the Minister or Minister of State appears before this committee because it lends prestige to the work of the committee and is always a very useful exchange of views. I note that the items on the agenda are Iran and related matters. The Minister concentrated almost exclusively on nuclear matters. This is a very significant point. Deputy Mulcahy, with whom I have not always agreed, has focused on this area. The fact that the Minister is present today is a partly a response to Deputy Mulcahy’s work.
However, I was slightly surprised that there was no mention of Pakistan because I would have thought this a far more problematic area. Pakistan is ruled by a military dictatorship which is a fully nuclear regime with military potential. This regime has been notoriously leaky and wrought considerable damage in terms of the unauthorised dispersal of nuclear materials around the world, about which I am very concerned.
In respect of India, I note the coy phrase that as there is little or no practical prospect that India will ever join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the damage to the treaty is more notional than real. However, the fact that India is not party to the treaty, as Deputy Mulcahy noted, is not very helpful either. India’s position is not of any great assistance in this area.
I hope that there is a future in the prospect of nuclear fusion technology. A massive investment of €24 billion in an accelerator is on the horizon with the intention of seeing whether nuclear fusion can be realised as a practical objective. This would make the nuclear industry much safer and would also create a clear divide between the development of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and its development for military purposes. I hope that nuclear fusion, which has been perceived as a scientific fantasy for a long time, may now, as a result of this massive investment, come about.
I have two questions for the Minister. The first question is very much in concert with comments made by the two previous speakers. The Iranian Government has produced some obnoxious statements and its attitude towards the Holocaust is ghastly. It has made itself a pariah. However, a substantial number of comments made by the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are perfectly sensible. As I understand it, the Iranian position is that they have infringed no legally binding commitments under international treaties. Is this the case? Have the Iranians done anything wrong so far?
We are very suspicious and cautious but we must tread carefully because it might well be that what is involved is simply an attempt to provide electricity-generating capacity for the Iranian people. This is the clear and unambiguous statement and commitment of the Iranian Government. It may not be telling the truth but this is what it has said.
The situation in Iraq, in which we were walked into an appalling and catastrophic war by the ignorance, stupidity, immorality and criminality of the Anglo-American alliance, should make us very cautious before we assert that there are weapons of mass destruction all over the shop. These weapons might exist but we certainly need to know for sure.
I am not concerned exclusively with the hypothetical nuclear future. I am also concerned about the human rights of people in these situations as they exist locally. I draw the Minister’s attention to two cases I raised in Nairobi with the Iranian delegation at the assembly of the IPU. One is the case of a 16 year old mentally handicapped girl who was raped and subsequently hanged for crimes against chastity. That concerns me even more because that indicates an attitude such as the hypocrisy in America where the Reverend Haggard prates against gay marriage while entertaining himself with amphetamines and a male tart. A similar situation exists in Iran where people are using sexual prejudice to terrorise communities.
A second case I would like the Minister to raise directly with the Iranian ambassador, as I have done in a meeting with this committee, is that of two youths, aged 16 and 17, who were accused of having a sexual relationship by the morality police and who were beaten to a pulp in a police station. They were held for 14 months and then taken out and hanged in a public square from a crane mounted on a lorry. A decent, married couple from Cork sent me the photographs available on the Internet. If the Minister looked at them, it would add colour to his meetings with the Iranian ambassador. I am sure he, as a decent and sensitive man, would find it utterly morally repulsive.
We need not just concentrate on the nuclear issue; if we do, I would be interested in the views on Pakistan. We are also entitled, because the agenda for today states we are dealing with Iran and related matters, to be concerned about the use of such blackguardly moral terrorism and repression against defenceless young people in Iran simply for the purposes of terrorising the local population who are forced to witness this. On both occasions many were in tears at what was being done. We must side with those victims and the general population of Iran in whose name these things are being done but who are as horrified as we are as decent human beings.