| Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, November 19, 2001 |
Lebanese President Pledges to US Congressmen to Limit Hezbollah |
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Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has assured to a visiting US congressmen delegation that Lebanon will restrict the activities of resistance guerrillas group Hezbollah, the official NNA news agency reported on Sunday in Beirut.
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Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has assured to a visiting US congressmen delegation that Lebanon will restrict the activities of resistance guerrillas group Hezbollah, the official NNA news agency reported on Sunday in Beirut.
After a meeting with Lahoud, Darell Issa of the US four-member House of Representatives delegation, said that Lahoud conveyed a "strong message of limitation on the reach of Hezbollah, or Party of God, which I will take back to our State Department."
"Our President George W. Bush expects countries to cooperate and join in the war on terrorism of a global reach. Lebanon has been cooperating in almost every way fully," he added.
"I will take back the note that there is a limitation on any activities of Hezbollah to not being of a global reach," the congressman said.
He regarded the meetings between the delegation and Lebanese leaders as "substantive" and would like to "listen to their concerns and their willingness to enforce those restrictions against any organization that would lead to terrorist organizations of global reach."
He also claimed that "Lebanon, like every country, has to do what it can as quickly as it can and as well as it can."
However, Issa has not mentioned the possibility of a confrontation between Lebanon and the United States.
The U.S. has defined Hezbollah as a terrorist group in a terrorist list released recently. It called on international community to freeze bank accounts of all terrorist organizations and individuals.
However, Beirut refused to freeze Hezbollah's assets and bank accounts, insisting that Hezbollah is a resistance group against Israel's occupation instead of a terrorist group.
The U.S. delegation arrived here Sunday from Syria on the second leg of a regional tour, that will also includes Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories, to discuss the Middle East peace process and the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
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