Pascal Smet, foreign affairs minister of the region of Brussels, resigned on Sunday after coming under fire last week for inviting the ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran to the Brussels Urban Summit.
“I have decided to resign,” Smet, who is also urban planning chief for the Belgian capital, told a press conference on Sunday.
Smet, a Flemish socialist, created a controversy when he invited the Tehran mayor, Alireza Zakani, along with 14 Iranian officials and two Russian officials, to the Urban Summit, which ran June 12-15. The accommodation costs for these officials were paid by the Brussels region.
Following the event, Smet defended himself at length before Brussels MPs, explaining in detail how he prepared and handled Zakani’s visit. Smet said he didn’t exerted any pressure on the Belgian Federal Foreign Affairs Ministry, and that if he had received a reasoned request from the federal authorities for rejecting the visas of Zakani and his team, he would have complied.
Smet acknowledged that it was a mistake for the Brussels government to foot the bill for the Iranian and Russian officials, but he blamed the error on one of his workers.
“With Belgian money, we’re paying for hotel nights for the Iranian mayor and a Russian representative — this is unacceptable,” Smet said, but added that he himself “did not make a mistake.”
“An employee made the wrong call,” Smet said.
Nonetheless, Smet took responsibility for the mistake and resigned, he said.
He also told reporters Sunday that the decision to approve Zakani’s visa was made by Belgian Federal Foreign Affairs Minister Hadja Lahbib.
Smet said he will continue sitting as a Brussels MP. “That will give me time to think about different things,” he said.
Earlier this year, Smet criticized Eurocrats for not wanting to move to poorer quarters of the city blighted by drug abuse, and suggested that many of the EU’s civil servants are themselves drug takers. European Council President Charles Michel slammed those comment as “unacceptable.”
