Iran summons Polish envoy to protest US summit

TEHRAN: Iran’s foreign ministry summoned Poland’s top diplomat in the country to protest its decision to host what it called an “anti-Iranian” summit, a spokesman said Sunday.

Poland’s charge d’affaires was summoned to “protest the anti-Iranian so-called peace and security conference,” said foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi on his Telegram channel. He was told “this is a hostile act by the United States against Iran and Poland is expected to refrain from going along with the US in holding this conference,” Ghasemi added.

The summit was announced Friday by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said dozens of countries would participate. 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 destabilising influence,” he told Fox News. Poland’s representative in Iran, Wojciech Unolt, reportedly said the conference, to be held February 13-14 in Warsaw, was not anti-Iranian and that Poland did not share recent remarks by the US against Iran. The Iranian official said this was inadequate and Iran would be “forced to retaliate” if Poland did not back down. Iran’s cinema organisation said it had cancelled a Polish film festival scheduled for next month, according to local media. “A guest who does not honour their host cannot continue to be a guest. To honour Iran’s dignity, the Polish film week in Tehran will be postponed until Warsaw’s behaviour is proper,” tweeted cinema organisation chief Hossein Entezami, according to the semi-official news agency ILNA. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif earlier poured scorn on the Warsaw summit and pointed out that the country, then impoverished after invasion by Britain and the Soviet Union, welcomed more than 100,000 Polish refugees during World War II.