- BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's
Hizbollah guerrilla group said Friday it was ready to fight any U.S. acts
against Lebanon after a top U.S. diplomat branded the group an "A-team
of terrorists" and vowed to bring it down.
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- "The American administration will bear responsibility
for any aggressive act against Lebanon," a statement from the Shi'ite
Muslim group said. "We are fully willing and ready to confront all
possibilities to defend our people."
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- Hizbollah's warning came a day after U.S. Deputy Secretary
of State Richard Armitage said Hizbollah could be worse than al Qaeda,
blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. cities.
-
- "Hizbollah made the A-team of terrorists, maybe
al Qaeda is actually the B-team," he said.
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- "We're going to go after them just like a high school
wrestler goes after opponents, we're going to take them down one at a time,"
Armitage said after a speech in Washington.
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- Like Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, Hizbollah is
on the State Department's list of "foreign terrorist organizations."
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- Washington blames Hizbollah, backed by Syria and Iran,
for a 1983 attack on a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 people,
the bombing of its embassy there the same year, and the kidnapping of U.S.
citizens in the 1975-1990 civil war.
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- Lebanon, which along with its powerbroker Syria defends
Hizbollah as legitimate resistance to occupation, has refused to comply
with U.S. demands to freeze the group's funds as part of the U.S. war against
terror sparked by September 11.
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- Hizbollah, which helped expel Israel from south Lebanon
in May 2000 after a 22-year occupation, says its operations are limited
to Lebanon and has a bloc in parliament.
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- The United States says it has cells in Europe, Asia and
the Americas.
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- "These threats will not put us off our responsibility
to our nation. We consider Armitage's comments a collection of fallacies
and lies to explain aggressive acts to public opinion," Hizbollah's
statement said, adding that Armitage's remarks showed Washington was doing
Israel's bidding in the region.
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