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Jordan, Lebanon Urge U.S. to Exclude Hizbollah From Terrorist List
AMMAN, Nov. 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A top Jordanian official has urged the United States to reconsider the inclusion of Palestinian and Lebanese groups on the U.S. State Department's new list of terrorist groups, in a statement published Monday, news agencies reported.
Government spokesman Saleh Kallab also told the Jordan Times that Washington's definition of "terrorism ... does not apply to many organizations that operate in the region.
"The Palestinian and Arab groups which operate for the sake of Palestinian independence cannot be classified as terrorist organizations," said Kallab, in reference to Hamas and Hizbollah.
"We call on and appeal to the U.S. to verify the criteria by which it classifies terrorist organizations, especially in the cases that relate to the Middle East," he told Jordan's largest English-language daily newspaper.
The Jordanian official added that the U.S.'s request to freeze the assets of Hamas and Hizbollah is not applicable to Jordan, because neither these groups, nor any other organization has bank accounts in Jordanian financial institutions.
Kallab was responding to last week's appeal by the U.S. administration to the international community to freeze the assets of the two groups.
Hizbollah is a Lebanese Shiite Muslim group formed in 1982 to resist Israel's invasion and occupation of Lebanon. It spearheaded the military campaign that forced an end to Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon last year and continues to attack Israeli troops occupying the disputed Shebaa Farms area.
The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, fights Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Hamas has claimed responsibility for several anti-Israeli attacks during the course of the 14-month-old uprising.
The U.S. State Department last week issued a new expanded list of alleged terrorist groups and said its assists should be frozen.
The move has triggered a wave of protest in Arab and Muslims countries, which consider Hizbollah and Hamas "freedom fighters" against Israeli occupation of Arab land.
Lebanon has refused to freeze the assets of Hizbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran.
Earlier, Lebanon insisted it stands with the United States in fighting terrorism, BBC's online service reported.
Lebanon's prime minister, Rafik Hariri, said there was dialogue with the Americans, and he hoped matters were moving in the right direction.
He said Lebanon itself had suffered greatly from terrorism. But he argued that Hizbollah's military activities are legitimate resistance to Israel.
Hariri said during a visit to Paris that in order to win the war against terrorism, the conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese needed to be solved.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hizbollah, on Sunday thanked Lebanon, Syria and Iran, for rejecting the most recent U.S. list of terrorist organizations that included the Hizbollah and several Palestinian groups not involved in the September 11 terror attacks.
He hailed them for insisting on the distinction between terrorist networks and groups fighting Israeli occupation of Arab lands.
Sheikh Nasrallah was speaking at an annual ceremony for the group's 1,284 "martyrs," who died in guerrilla warfare against Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in May 2000.
On Saturday, Lebanese Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares also called on Washington to remove Hizbollah from its terrorist list.
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