BRUSSELS (Dispatches) -- European Union countries on Friday appeared ready to snub a U.S. conference in Poland next month over concerns it is part of a U.S. drive to ramp up pressure on Iran.
EU diplomats raised questions about the real agenda of the February 13-14 conference, saying that it was organized at very short notice and noting that Iran does not appear to be invited. An EU official said the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, has other commitments and will not attend.
The diplomats and officials were briefing reporters on condition of anonymity because the issue has not yet been discussed formally among ministers.
The EU has been battling to keep alive an international nuclear agreement with Iran since the U.S. abandoned the pact last year.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the conference on Iran and the Middle East last Friday.
He made the announcement in an interview during a regional tour aimed at mollifying U.S. allies after President Donald Trump’s shock decision to withdraw all American troops from Syria.
"We’ll bring together dozens of countries from all around the world,” Pompeo told the Fox News network.
They will "focus on Middle East stability and peace and freedom and security here in this region, and that includes an important element of making sure that Iran is not a destabilizing influence,” he said.
The occupying regime of Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been invited to participate.
Tehran has called the conference a "desperate anti-Iran circus”, and earlier this week summoned a Polish envoy to the country in protest.
The official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday that Iran had conveyed its protest message to Poland’s Chargé d’Affaires Wojciech Unolt, demanding that Warsaw not go along with the "hostile move” by the United States against Tehran.
The statement quoted an unnamed Iranian official as saying that if the summit goes ahead, Iran will resort to unspecified "counter-action” toward Poland.
Responding to Pompeo’s announcement, Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif said last Friday on Twitter that the conference would bring shame on the Polish government and invoked how during World War II Iran saved Polish lives.
Iran hosted tens of thousands of Polish war refugees who were brought to the country after surviving work camps in the Soviet Union and before they migrated to then-emerging Occupied Palestine, New Zealand and some African countries. Scores stayed on after the war, choosing to reside in Iran.
Zarif tweeted: "Polish Government can’t wash the shame: while Iran saved Poles in WWII, it now hosts desperate anti-Iran circus.”
Tehran and Warsaw have had good relations. On Saturday, Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz said Poland supported the EU’s efforts to preserve its nuclear agreement with Iran, but claimed the deal alone would not keep Iran from "destabilizing” the region.
Thousands of activists in the United States and other countries have recently signed a petition, calling on European countries to boycott the anti-Iran summit.
The activists started the petition on the website of the anti-war group Code Pink to ask European countries not to attend the summit.
By Thursday, more than 3,400 people had signed the online petition which urges EU countries to skip Pompeo’s "belligerent conference” and "instead host an alternative one with all nations of the region, including Iran”.