BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- The United States and Lebanon are divided over the status of the militant Hezbollah group, which Washington says trains terrorists and Lebanon views as a resistance organization.
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said Monday Hezbollah had "no activity" outside Lebanon. He said his country would officially inform the United Nations its position on Resolution 1373, which was adopted following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
He said Lebanon would comply with the resolution, but would distinguish between "terrorism, which Lebanon strongly condemns, and the right to resist occupation."
Hezbollah fought the 22-year-long Israeli occupation of Lebanon, which ended in May 2000.
His comments came following remarks made by Vincent Battle, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, to a Lebanese television station Sunday.
Battle said Hezbollah was training groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad that have been involved in suicide bomb attacks on Israeli civilian and military targets.
Battle told LBC television Hezbollah's activities were not just confined to Lebanon and it was on the U.S. list of terrorist organization because its reach was global.
He said Lahoud's argument about Hezbollah's "local" scope "did not convince" the United States.
He said Washington saw the reality of Hezbollah "as a terrorist organization, which provides training and equipment to terrorist groups, which make it implicated in terrorist actions."
He said Hezbollah should abandon terrorism, noting the "United States admits that the party has become an effective political force" in Lebanon "but our problem is that it is an organization which harbors terrorists."
Hezbollah has denied having been behind a wave of anti-Western bombings and kidnappings in Lebanon in the 1980s or a having a role in the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina.
