Report: U.S. Congress Clamps Down on Hizbullah's Fundraising Activities
United States lawmakers are mulling to toughen economic sanctions against Hizbullah, media reports said on Saturday.
A U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to introduce new legislation that would “target Hizbullah's fundraising activities,” the Israeli Ynet news reported.
Al-Monitor website said that the bill's draft summary would allow the U.S. Treasury Department to "target central banks and other financial institutions, primarily in Lebanon and Europe, that knowingly engage with Hizbullah and its enablers."
The bill also targets Hizbullah's al-Manar television by requiring the U.S. administration to list and penalize any satellite provider that still carries the television channel.
The bill, if passed, requires President Barack Obama to determine whether Hizbullah “meets the criteria of a transnational criminal organization.”
Al-Monitor reported that the law's draft summary notes that it is American policy "to prevent Hizbullah's global logistics and financial network from operating in order to curtail its domestic and international activities.”
"The United States must deal with Hizbullah firmly and decisively with unyielding resolve by crippling its extensive, illegal financial network," said Congressman Mark Meadows, one of the bill's writers.
"Hizbullah’s days of unhindered criminal operations and terrorist activity are numbered."
Congressman Eliot Engel, another sponsor of the bill, said that the bill "will give the Administration the tools they need to break any lifeline to Hizbullah."
According to the website, congressman Brad Schneider said in a press release that “Hizbullah continues to represent a threat to the United States, Israel and the entire region.”
In 2013, Obama renewed a “national emergency” which imposes a freeze on assets of people linked to Hizbullah, stressing that they still “undermine Lebanon's stability.”
The U.S. considers Hizbullah a terror group and accuses Syria and Iran of arming it.
In August 2007, President George W. Bush ordered a freeze on U.S. assets of anyone Washington deems to be undermining the Lebanese government.
H. K.
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