DATE=03/31/2002

TYPE=EDITORIAL

NUMBER=0-09794

TITLE=EDITORIAL: HEZBOLLAH'S LONG RECORD OF TERROR

INTERNET=YES

CONTENT=THIS EDITORIAL IS BEING RELEASED FOR USE BY ALL SERVICES.

Anncr: Next, an editorial expressing the policies of the United States Government:

Voice: This month marks the tenth anniversary of a barbarous massacre perpetrated by the Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah. On March 17th, 1992, Hezbollah terrorists set off a car-bomb at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina. Twenty-nine people were killed and more than two-hundred were wounded.

This was not the first terrorist attack carried out by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Nor was it the worst. In October 1983, Hezbollah suicide terrorists attacked a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. Two-hundred forty-one Americans and fifty-eight French military personnel were killed. Hezbollah is also thought to have been involved in an attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983 and on the embassy annex there in 1984. These attacks killed about eighty people. In addition, Hezbollah is suspected in the 1994 attack on the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that killed nearly one-hundred people.

One of Hezbollah's leaders is Imad Fayez Mugniyah [im-AHD FAH-yez MOOG-nee-yah]. He is wanted by U.S. authorities for terrorist acts that include the 1985 hijacking of a Trans World Airlines jet, in which an American was murdered. He is believed to be hiding in Lebanon or Iran. The U.S. has offered a reward of up to twenty-five million dollars for information leading to his arrest.

Hezbollah is an extremist Shia Muslim group dedicated to increasing its political power in Lebanon and to destroying Israel and the United States. At a rally in Lebanon on March 24th, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah [HAH-sahn nahs-RAH-lah] called for the destruction of Israel. Amid chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," he criticized Arab leaders who have made proposals for a peaceful settlement between Palestinians and Israelis.

Hezbollah is closely allied with Iran, one of the world's leading sponsors of international terrorism and one of three countries singled out by President George W. Bush as part of an axis of evil. Hezbollah receives substantial financial and military aid from Iran and Syria.

As President Bush said at the United Nations in November, two months after al-Qaida's attacks on America, "We must unite in opposing all terrorists, not just some of them. In this world there are good causes and bad causes, and we may disagree on where the line is drawn. Yet, there is no such thing as a good terrorist. No national aspiration, no remembered wrong," said President Bush, "can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent. Any government that rejects this principle, trying to pick and choose its terrorist friends, will know the consequences."

Anncr: That was an editorial expressing the policies of the United States Government. If you have a comment, please write to Editorials, V-O-A, Washington, D-C, 20237, U-S-A. You may also comment at www-dot-ibb-dot-gov-slash-editorials, or fax us at (202) 619-1043.