Iran condemns opposition rally in France

Tehran: Iran on Tuesday condemned a rally in France on the weekend by an exiled opposition group it labelled a "stinking corpse" and said it would denounce any country that backed it.

The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI) claimed that 100,000 Iranians had attended its annual rally in Bourget, near Paris, on Saturday.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will continue to confront this hypocritical little group and will condemn any government" that supports it, government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht told the official IRNA agency.

He described the NCRI as an "annihilated terrorist group" and a "stinking corpse".

The NCRI is a political umbrella coalition of five Iranian opposition groups that includes the People`s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK)

The MEK, formed in the 1960s to overthrow the shah of Iran, fought the rise of the mullahs in Tehran following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

It earned itself a listing as a "terrorist organisation" by the US State Department in 1997.

It was only removed from terrorist watchlists by the European Union in 2008 and the United States in 2012.