U.S. 'Urges Every Nation in the World' to Brand Hizbullah Terrorist Organization
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden stressed on Monday that Washington is “urging every nation in the world,” mainly European countries, to consider Hizbullah a terrorist organization.
Iran is “using terrorist proxies to spread violence in the region and beyond the region, putting Israelis, Americans, citizens of every continent in danger,” Biden told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel lobby in the United States.
“For too long, Hizbullah has tried to pose as nothing more than a political and social welfare group, while plotting against innocents in Eastern Europe -- from Eastern Europe to East Africa; from Southeast Asia to South America,” he said.
“Hizbullah is a terrorist organization. Period. And we are urging every nation in the world that we deal with -- and we deal with them all -- to start treating Hizbullah as such, and naming them as a terrorist organization,” he told the powerful lobby to a laud applause.
Hizbullah “has targeted people on several continents. We’ll say and we’ll do our part to stop them. And we ask the world to do the same,” he said.
“That’s why we’ve been talking to our friends in Europe to forcefully declare Hizbullah a terrorist organization,” Biden added.
Hizbullah has been on a U.S. terror blacklist since 1995 after a series of anti-American attacks, including the bombing of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in the 1980s.
Pressure on Europe to brand it a terrorist organization began to rise after Bulgaria accused the group of involvement in a deadly bus bomb attack on Israeli tourists in the resort of Burgas last July.
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