MSNBC: Andrea Mitchell Reports
Guest: Tom Ridge
Date: November 4، 2011
Chris… :
The UN’s top envoy to Iraq is trying to broker an end to the standoff between the Iraqi Government and a group of several thousand Iranian exiles who have been living in camp in eastern Iraq. The exiles are part of a group that is on the U.S. terror list despite the fact that they oppose the government in Tehran.
Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge served as homeland security secretary and is among those calling for the Administration to protect the exiles and remove the group from the U.S. terror list. Governor thanks for joining us، tell us what is going on here and why you decided to get involved in this.
Tom Ridge:
Well it’s not just my engagement Chris, there is an extraordinary group of bi-partisan or even a-political leaders or even military leaders, diplomats in United States, oversea, the United Kingdom the EU, the district court in Washington said that this group was put on the foreign terrorist watch list in 1997, doesn’t deserve to be there. Their life is complicated because the Maliki government in 09 and April of 11 went into the city they’d built over 20 or 30 years and killed 36 of them and wounded several hundred. He has also said that they are going to close the camp at Dec 31st when American troops are withdrawn and ironically it was the American troops that promised them to protect them in 2003 and 4 when they surrendered their weapons to us so they could protect themselves. So we would like to see president Obama convince the Maliki government to extend the time that they could stay in Camp Ashraf. We want the U.N.H.C.R to get in there to determine their asylum status, they have been granted that by the U.N. But frankly as long as the U.S. keeps them on the FTO watch list the prospects for them being resettled are slim to none. I talked to the UNHCR representative yesterday. He was very frustrated with the Maliki government and he is kind of disappointed with the U.S.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4lRV-b4a74
Sec Tom Ridge on Camp Ashraf MSNBC 4 Nov 2011