The European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerckhove, told EJP he doesn’t believe that the EU would put Hezbollah on the list of terror groups because several member states, including France, oppose such a move. The EU official made the comment in the framework of a seminar on ‘Terrorism and Europe’ organized at the European Parliament in Brussels by B’nai B’rith International’s EU affairs office.

A group of five MEPs from across the political spectrum have initiated a campaign which calls on the EU to add Hezbollah on the terror list because, they said, the Lebanese Shiite militia "poses a direct terrorist threat to the EU’s security."

The MEPs issued a written declaration calling the EU to make such a move, which sor far has been signed by 44 members of the European Parliament.

Currently, among the 27 EU member states, only the UK and Netherlands are in favor of adding Hezbollah to the EU list of terror which would freeze the group’s Europe-held financial assets.

This blacklist is regularly updated by the member states while it is the EU Council which has the final say on it.

According to de Kerckhove, the reluctance of several to take a step against Hezbollah lies in the fact that it is represented in the government of Lebanon. "It plays a role on the Lebanese political scene and several countries think that this could bring them closer to the democratic process," he added.

De Kerckhove, who works under the umbrella of EU’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana, said that while he doesn’t want to underestimate the threat posed by Hezbollah in Europe, he believes that the main threat itoday “is coming from Al-Qaeda."

“The threat remains high and diversified,” he said.

German Liberal MEP Alexander Alvaro, one of the co-sponsors of the call to blacklist Hezbollah, said that “900 Hezbollah sleepers are stationed within Germany.”

“The situation is probably not very different elsewhere," underlining that a terrorist group label would enable the "drying out of its activities in Europe."

Czech Jana Hybaskova, from the Christian Democrat group, stressed that Al Manar, the Hezbollah television station, which was banned from the EU satellite network, "is still spreading its hatred and terrorist propaganda to European viewers through Egyptian satellite providers." "Terrorism is an imminent danger for Europe and it is our duty to warn citizens about its threats," she said.

Portuguese Socialist MEP Paulo Casaca said "it is Hezbollah's political influence that makes it a dangerous organisation. "We hope to get as many signatures as possible from MEPs to our declaration and we would like this to be a policy of the European Parliament," he added, expressing his disappointment over the fact that his own political group does not support his tough line against Hezbollah.

The two other MEPs who initiated the declaration are Polish Socialist Jozef Pinior and German Helga Trupel from the Greens.

BRUSSELS (EJP)