Middle East: Britain Bans Military Wing of Hizbullah

Britain has outlawed the military wing of the Lebanese organization Hizbullah, accusing it of supporting attacks on coalition forces in Iraq and backing Palestinian terrorism in the occupied territories.

Hizbullah's external security organization is already proscribed under UK law, but the revised ban, announced yesterday, extends to its entire military wing and specifically mentions its role helping "militants" fighting in Iraq.

The Foreign Office made clear that this was the main point of the move and urged Iraq's neighbours not to support violence. "Iran and Syria should play a constructive role and stop backing groups that attack Iraqi and coalition forces," an FO spokesman said. Hizbullah counts Tehran and Damascus as its most loyal friends.

Iran denies training and arming Iraqi Shia groups, but the charge has been made by both the US and the Iraqi governments. Latest reports say that Hizbullah instructors trained Shia militiamen in southern Iraq until three months ago when they slipped across the border to Iran.

Iraqi Shia are said to prefer working with Arabic-speaking Lebanese than with Farsi-speakers from Iran.

Syria insists it is working hard to close its border with Iraq to foreign fighters, largely Sunnis linked to al-Qaida, but western diplomats say it could do more.

"Hizbullah's military wing is providing active support to militants in Iraq who are responsible for attacks both on coalition forces and on Iraqi civilians, including providing training in the use of deadly roadside bombs," the junior Home Office minister Tony McNulty said in a statement. Gordon Brown told MPs the decision was made "on the sole grounds of new evidence of involvement in terrorism".

Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's leader, told supporters in Beirut he was "not surprised" by the move, citing Britain's responsibility for the creation of Israel and the knighthood awarded to Salman Rushdie, whose book the Satanic Verses was deemed "blasphemous" by Iran. "I consider it a natural decision to be issued by a founding bloc of the Zionist entity," he said. "Every time a decision is issued against resistance movements ... we consider this a medal of honor."

Hizbullah operatives planned and supervised the kidnapping of five British nationals from a finance ministry compound in Baghdad in May 2007, the Associated Press reported from Baghdad yesterday. The Britons are still being held. According to some Iraqi sources Hizbullah's operations in Iraq were supervised by Imad Mughniyeh, a senior commander of the group who was assassinated in a car bombing in Damascus last February.

The Home Office also linked the Lebanese Islamist group to terrorism in the Palestinian territories, singling out its ties to Islamic Jihad, which is active in the Gaza Strip, has carried out suicide bombings and is backed by Iran.

Hizbullah, inspired by the Iranian Islamic revolution, was created in the 1980s and sees itself as the vanguard of resistance to Israel, but is also represented in the Lebanese parliament. The Home Office said the ban would not affect "the legitimate political, social and humanitarian role Hizbullah plays in Lebanon".