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US Decries Hezbollah Threats Against Israel

By David Gollust
State Department
14 February 2008

The United States Thursday expressed alarm over Hezbollah threats against Israel in the wake of the assassination in Damascus of Hezbollah commander and reputed terrorist mastermind Imad Mughniyeh. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nazrallah says the Lebanese militant group is ready for "open war" against Israel, which it blames for Mughniyeh's death. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.

State Department officials say that given Hezbollah's proven record in international terrorism, its latest threats against Israel should be taken seriously and viewed with alarm by the entire international community.

Despite Israeli denials of involvement, Hezbollah blames the Jewish state for Wednesday's car-bomb assassination of Mughniyeh, one of the world's most wanted terrorist figures, on a residential street of the Syrian capital Damascus.

In a video message played to thousands of Hezbollah supporters Thursday at the funeral of Mughniyeh in Beirut, Nasrallah said the killing occurred outside of what he called the natural battlefield with Israel - implicitly the Israel-Lebanon border region - and that if Israel wants "open war" with Hezbollah, it will have it.

In a talk with reporters here, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said Hezbollah has a long record of carrying out terrorist acts around the globe and that any time it makes threats against Israel, a fellow democracy of the United States and a U.N. member state, it should be of concern to the whole world.

"We all must be concerned whenever you have a group of terrorists that are threatening actions against a civilized democratic society," McCormack said. "The moment we stop worrying about what might happen to a neighbor or to a fellow democratic state, and start talking about that being somebody else's problem, then there's a problem. So as a general matter, those kind of statements are quite concerning and should be alarming to everyone."

McCormack also said the presence of Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the Beirut funeral event underscored the historical links between Iran and what he termed its "terrorist group creation," Hezbollah.

In unusually blunt remarks Wednesday, McCormack said the world was a better place with the death of Mughniyeh, who he described as a cold-blooded killer, a mass murderer and terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost.

The slain Hezbollah figure was on U.S. lost-wanted lists and was linked by U.S. officials to a series of major terrorist attacks.

They include Beirut bombings in the 1980s that killed hundreds of U.S. service personnel and embassy staffers, and 1990s attacks on the Jewish community center and Israeli embassy in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, that killed more than 100 others.

The Mughniyeh funeral coincided with a mass rally in Beirut marking the third anniversary of the assassination of Lebanon's pro-Western former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, one of several moderate Lebanese political leaders killed by bombs in recent years.

Spokesman McCormack said the anniversary is an occasion to reaffirm that the United States fully supports, and stands with, those in Lebanon who want to build a free and democratic country, one that is independent and free of foreign interference.