TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie met diplomats from 12 Western countries on Tuesday to plead for them to take in hundreds of the MKO members held in a camp north of Baghdad.

Al-Rubaie said, “Our constitution is clear that no terrorist organization can stay in Iraq to threaten our neighbors,” Reuters reported.
The Mojahedin Khalq Organization established a camp for about 3,500 members in Iraq, which its forces used to launch cross-border attacks into Iran. It fought alongside Saddam Hussein’s forces during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
""We want to close all the files with our neighbors, and our eastern neighbor Iran sees this as a threat to their national security,"" Al-Rubaie told envoys from the United States, Canada, Australia and nine EU countries.
He said 35 camp residents have Western citizenship and 914 have acquired refugee status abroad. He asked diplomats to take in those 949 plus others with family ties to their countries.
""You have helped us a great deal in liberating Iraq. Now we need to clear up some of what we have unwillingly inherited from the previous regime,"" he said.
The MKO informed that they are no longer welcome in Iraq say they will not go willingly and intend to use legal means to fight any attempt to drive them out by force.
The fate of 3,500 Camp Ashraf residents, most of whom have been living there or in similar camps for 20 years, has been in question since Iraq took over Ashraf from U.S. forces this year.
The group surrendered its weaponry to U.S. forces after the 2003 invasion of Iraq but its presence remains a source of friction between Baghdad, Washington and Tehran.
The European Union decided on Monday to remove the MKO from its list of terrorist organizations. The United States, Iraq and Iran all officially still consider it a terrorist group.
Al-Rubaie said Iraq has no refugee law, and the Iranians cannot therefore stay in Iraq as refugees.
Asked by a Canadian diplomat when Iraq would shut the camp, he gave no firm timetable but said: ""They are a cult, a religious cult. They are brainwashed and they are controlled by a small group of people. We need to detoxify them.""