In this interview excerpt, Paul Mertz, Luxembourg Ambassador to Paris and Permanent Representative to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) from 1991 to 1998, discusses his activities during the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 1997. Paul Mertz, who chaired the ‘Middle East’ group, describes the crisis between Iran and the European Union Member States following the trial in Germany of those who masterminded and carried out the assassination of three Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders and their interpreter on 17 September 1992 at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin.