Vienna - Anti-Iran activists held protests at the outset of the annual shareholders' meeting of Austria's oil and gas company OMV on Wednesday, slamming a planned multi-billion dollar gas deal. A small number of activists from several anti-nuclear, Kurdish or Jewish NGOs picketed in front of the meetings location, a conference centre in Vienna, chanting slogans against Iran's "jihadist regime" and held up of photos apparently showing evidence of human rights violations by Tehran.
"The OMV deal would give a both an economic and propaganda victory to (Iran's president) Ahmadinejad," Simone Dinah Hauptmann of Stop the Bomb, an NGO accusing Iran of pursing nuclear weapons, said.
The formerly state-run oil company cut a deal with Iran last year, agreeing to develop a gas field in southern Iran and produce liquefied gas.
According to Iranian news reports, the deal, which has not been finalized, was worth 30 billion dollars over the next 25 years.
The protesters, who were also set to ask critical questions during the meeting, said they wanted to inform shareholders of the risk involved in the deal.
OMV already rejected activists' demands that the deal should be scrapped owing to international sanctions against Tehran, saying the deal was not covered by UN sanctions.
Activists called on shareholders to sell their stocks in OMV in protest of the deal and warned that proceeds from the deal would be used to "further terrorize the Iranian people".
A group of German-based NGOs battling anti-Semitism called on OMV to stop cooperation with a regime planning a "genocide against Israel."
In a statement earlier this week, Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress called on Austria, which holds a 30-per-cent stake in the company, to exert pressure on OMV.
"It is wrong for any Western company to sign business deals of such a magnitude with the regime in Tehran," Lauder said.
"The Iranian regime is openly defiant of the UN sanctions imposed against it. It threatens Israel with annihilation and sponsors terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah," he said.
OMV's management may also be in for uncomfortable questions regarding its pursuit of a merger with its Hungarian competitor MOL, which is met by fierce resistance by MOL's management and the Hungarian government.
A Hungarian court on Tuesday rejected OMV's demands to scrap preferential voting rights for the Hungarian state.
