12/30/2011
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations has complained to Iraq about mortar attacks this week on an Iranian dissident camp near Baghdad and has won a promise that they will be stopped, a U.N. spokesman said on Thursday.
Two mortars hit Camp Ashraf on Sunday, just days after Baghdad extended a year-end deadline for the facility to be closed as the United Nations
negotiated resettlement of 3,000 residents there.
Camp Ashraf, 40 miles from Baghdad, has been home for 25 years to the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran, or PMOI, an Iranian opposition group the United States and Iran officially consider a terrorist organization.
The U.N. special envoy to Iraq, Martin Kobler, “raised the reported mortar attacks … with the Iraqi competent authorities, who confirmed that these attacks did indeed take place,” U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
The Iraqis “promised to ensure that these attacks cease and to hold the perpetrators accountable,” Nesirky said.
U.N. officials could not say whether the Iraqi authorities had given any indication of who they believed was responsible for the attacks.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said last week he had agreed to extend the deadline for closing the camp on condition the United Nations transfer about 400 to 800 residents to other countries before the end of this year.
