Iraq Vows to Expel U.S-based MKO

Iraq on Tuesday told the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) that was given a base in Iraq by Saddam Hussein but is now out of favor with a government that is close to Iran that it must move out of the camp immediately or be forced to leave.
Iraqi authorities have been locked in a protracted row with the anti-Iran terrorist group over their plan to move 3,000 MKO members from Camp Ashraf to a large former US military base–a step toward expelling the group from Iraqi territory, Reuters reported.
The United States also said last month that the group should close the camp, saying it was ‘gravely mistaken’ to think there was another option.
“We have reached a dead end (with them) and the extension ends today, they have to move,” Falih Al-Fayadh, Iraq’s National Security Advisor, told a conference attended by the UN mission in Iraq, aid groups and western and Arab diplomats.
“Now we are free to implement the mechanisms required to transfer those who live in (Camp Ashraf) to where we find appropriate.”
Reports say 1,200 MKO members still are living at Camp Ashraf.
About 1,800 to 1,900 terrorists have already been moved to the new facility, according to officials.
Clashes between Ashraf residents and Iraqi security forces last year killed 34 people.
“The Iraqi government does not define involuntary transfer as being through violence or the use of weapons,” Fayadh told the conference.
Iraq said it will observe a grace period of ‘a few days’ to allow foreign governments to offer the group sanctuary or to suggest other solutions to the dispute.
The MKO was founded in the 1960s to oppose the shah of Iran, but took up arms against the country’s new revolutionary rulers after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
The MKO fled to Iraq in 1986, where it enjoyed the support of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up its camp near the Iranian border.
The group is also known to have cooperated with Saddam in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds. The group has carried out numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials.