Source: Agence France-Presse
PARIS (AFP) More than 70,000 supporters of Iran's opposition protested near Paris on Saturday, urging the international community to remove bans on the country's armed opposition group, organisers said.

The protest came just days after Britain's decision to lift its ban on the People's Mojehedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI)[MEK], a move Iran denounced as a "disgrace".

Delegations of Iranian PMOI supporters from Germany, Australia, Belgium, Canada, the United States, Britain, Iraq and Jordan took part in the assembly in a hall in the Villepinte suburb of Paris, according to organisers.

"I call on the Council of Ministers of the European Union to erase the name of the PMOI [MEK] from the list of terrorist organisations," opposition leader Maryam Radjavi told supporters.

By labelling the group as terrorists, Western governments "have helped the world's most powerful supporter of terrorism," said Radjavi.

"Remove this chain with which you have bound the hands and feet of the resistance against the religious dictatorship" in Tehran, she said.

Formed in the 1960s in opposition to the rule of the US-backed shah of Iran, the PMOI [MEK] took part in the 1979 Islamic revolution but then took up arms against the Islamic republic.

Organisers on Saturday called the opposition assembly "particularly significant three days away from the French presidency of the EU" because "France plays a major role in the Iran crisis."

France takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union on July 1.

The assembly supported the decision in London to remove the ban on PMOI.

British lawmakers approved the move following a court verdict last month ruling that the government had to remove the group from a terrorist blacklist.