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EU refuses to blacklist Hezbollah

24 July 2012 21:47 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The European Union (EU) on Tuesday rejected the Israeli application to blacklist the Lebanese Hezbollah into the world terrorist organizations, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, told a press conference following the annual EU-Israel Association Council meeting that "Of course the time has come to put Hezbollah into the terrorists of Europe."

"We think and we have hard evidence that the ones who stand behind these terrorist attacks are Hezbollah and Iran," he said, referring to last week’s bus bombing in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian driver.

However, the Israeli request was rejected by the EU side, which needs unanimity to blacklist an organization.

"Let me express the position of the European Union on putting Hezbollah on the list of terrorist organization. Such decision requires unanimity in the EU Council," said Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.

She further explained that the Lebanese Hezbollah is an organization "combined a political party, social services network as well as an armed wing."

Taking Hezbollah’s active role in politics into account, "there is no consensus between (EU) Member States (to blacklist the Lebanese organization)," she said.