September 12, 2003	Friday	Rajab 14, 1424

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

BRUSSELS, Sept 11: The European Union agreed on Thursday to put the Palestinian militant group Hamas on its blacklist of outlawed terrorist organizations, diplomats said.

The decision by the EU’s council of ambassadors comes in a week when Palestinian suicide bombers have killed 15 people in Israel, and the Israelis have tried unsuccessfully to kill top Hamas political leaders in the Gaza Strip in air strikes.

Details of the decision, which requires member states to freeze the assets of an organization and opens the way to prosecute its members on terrorism charges, will be published in the EU’s Official Journal on Saturday or early next week.

The EU outlawed Hamas’ military wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, last year but held back from ostracizing the political wing, arguing it could play a role in peace efforts.

Diplomats said that due to French reservations, the EU decision named only Hamas as a whole but not individual leaders or charities suspected of fundraising for the Islamic movement, unlike a recent US move.

“The decision was taken to include Hamas on the list as a whole without any other specification,” one source said after the envoys met in a restricted session in a special bug-proof chamber in the EU council headquarters.

A spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana declined to confirm the decision but said the 15-nation bloc’s foreign ministers had sent a very clear message to Hamas at their meeting last weekend in Italy.

“This is an unequivocal message from the EU that terrorism will achieve nothing in the Middle East,” spokeswoman Cristina Gallach told Reuters.

“What has happened since August, when Hamas broke seven weeks of ceasefire, was absolutely unacceptable. Hamas leaders know that if they reverse their position, renounce violence and enter the political process, they can come off the list,” she said.

ISRAELI RAIDS: The Israeli army launched raids in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, destroying houses of wanted militants, Palestinian security forces said on Thursday.

Military sources said they had destroyed the Ramallah home of Mohammed Abdelrahman Salam Msalah, a member of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed group linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.

Mr Msalah, who is currently in Israeli detention, was implicated in the killing of eight Israelis in a series of attacks, the army added.

Troops also dynamited the home of Imad Sharif, a Hamas militant, in the nearby town of Beitunia, Israeli and Palestinian sources added.

Elsewhere, Israeli troops launched a brief incursion into the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, the Palestinian security sources said.

The troops, backed by armoured cars and bulldozers, pushed several hundred metres into the camp in the autonomous Palestinian sector, with troops firing warning shots. The bullozers destroyed 15 houses in the area before the Israeli forces withdrew.

MUBARAK IN ROME: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called for a halt to the spiral of bloodshed in the Middle East as he arrived in Rome on Thursday for talks with Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.—Reuters / AFP