Gulf Cooperation Council Warns of Steps against Hizbullah
Gulf states could take measures against Hizbullah in the near future, the head of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council said on Sunday.
The GCC "decided to look into taking measures against Hizbullah's interests in the member states," GCC chief Abdul Latif al-Zayani told reporters at the end of a ministerial meeting in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
Zayani gave no other details on the nature of the measures or the interests to which he was referring.
Bahraini Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ghanim al-Buainain said that "nobody could cover up Hizbullah's actions in regional countries."
"It is a terrorist organization and this is how Gulf states see it," he added.
However, placing Hizbullah on the GCC's "terror" list was "a technical and legal matter that needs to be further studied," the Bahraini minister said.
At the opening of the meeting, Buainain had called for "a serious stance and united action to end the attacks on the interests of the Syrian people and giving them the right to choose their political regime."
"We see this today as a clear and flagrant Iranian interference, alongside its ally Hizbullah, in the Syrian crisis using all sorts of weapons and turning Syria into a battle zone that has left thousands of Syrians dead," he said.
Bahrain, which currently holds the GCC's rotating presidency, has branded the movement a "terrorist organization."
Hizbullah's men are fighting alongside Syrian government troops in a fierce battle to retake the strategic Syrian town of Qusayr from mostly Sunni rebels.
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had previously justified the group's involvement in Syria by saying they were defending Lebanese-inhabited border villages inside Syria against rebel attacks and Shiite holy sites in Damascus province.
But the offensive on Qusayr forced the movement to change its argument.
"Syria is the rear guard of the resistance (Hizbullah's fight with Israel), its backbone, and the resistance cannot stay with its arms folded when its rear guard is exposed," Nasrallah said last month in a speech for the 13th anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
"We are idiots if we do not act," he added.
Nasrallah stressed that Hizbullah will win the battle in Syria against the “United States, Israel and the Takfiris just like it emerged victorious in previous wars.”
The Gulf Cooperation Council is made up of six Sunni-ruled states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Source: Agence France Presse
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