Israel wants EU to blacklist Hezbollah

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JERUSALEM, July 23 (UPI) -- Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman plans to ask European foreign ministers to blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, officials said.

Lieberman was scheduled to arrive in Brussels Monday to meet with European Union Foreign Policy head Catherine Ashton and the foreign ministers of France Bulgaria, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Croatia, Slovakia, Sweden and Greece, the Hebrew-language daily Maariv said.

Lieberman will tell the ministers there is concrete evidence the Iranian-backed Hezbollah was involved in the bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria last week in which five Israelis, the Bulgarian bus driver and the alleged bomber were killed, the paper said. He also plans to ask his counterparts to increase the security of visiting Israeli tourists and Jewish institutions in their countries, the paper said.

Bilateral relations and developments in the Middle East region also were on the agenda, the paper said.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Sunday appeared on two U.S. networks, telling viewers it was clear Hezbollah was behind the attack in Bulgaria. Israel knows without "a shred of doubt" the operation was carried out "with encouragement, at the behest and coordination of Iran," he said.