DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - FRANCE/LEBANON: "WE ARE NOT TERRORISTS, WE ARE A RESISTANCE MOVEMENT & THE FRENCH KNOW THIS THROUGH OUR NON-STOP CONTACTS..."

Hiz b'allah responds to the following story:

DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - FRANCE/LEBANON: SARKOZY ACCUSES HIZ B'ALLAH OF TERRORIST ATTACKS


Hezbollah rejects French terrorism charge ahead of talks

BEIRUT (AFP) - Hezbollah on Tuesday shrugged off French accusations that it was a terrorist group, without threatening to pull out of an all-party conference in France aimed at easing Lebanon's political crisis.

"Hezbollah did not take (an official) position regarding what was said in Paris," said the Shiite group's Mohammed Fneish, one of six pro-Syrian cabinet ministers who stepped down from the Western-backed government in November.

On Monday, President Nicolas Sarkozy's spokesman said France would press Hezbollah at the July 14-16 Paris conference to renounce the use of terrorism and limit itself to being a political party.

Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States, is not on the European Union list of terrorist groups.

Sarkozy told family members of three kidnapped Israeli soldiers that his "goal was that Hezbollah renounces the use of terrorism and becomes once again a political party like the others and part of parliamentary democracy," said spokesman David Martinon.

"These remarks are meant to satisfy the Zionist lobby" in France, said Fneish, one of Hezbollah's two representatives to the conference, quoted in Beirut's An-Nahar newspaper.

"If Hezbollah was a terrorist movement, why was it invited to participate in the conference?" he asked. "We are not terrorists, we are a resistance movement and the French know this through our non-stop contacts with them."

...


Pertinent Links:

1) Hezbollah rejects French terrorism charge ahead of talks