Moscow, SANA- Russian President’s Special Representative for the Middle East and African Countries and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Sunday that Moscow does not view Lebanese Hezbollah Party, Palestinian Hamas Movement and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party of Syria as terrorist organizations.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party represents the Syrian Kurds, Bogdanov added in a statement on Sunday, adding..with regard to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) there is disagreement over it not only between Russia and Turkey, but also between Turkey and the US, which are members of NATO yet there are differences between them, and how it is about us.
Some say Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. We maintain contacts and relations with the party because we do not consider it a terrorist organization as the party was legally elected by the Lebanese people to the Parliament and there are cabinet members and ministers from the party.. It is a legitimate sociopolitical force, Bogdanov was quoted as saying.
Bogdanov said Russia also does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization, as the American consider it, but as a part of the spectrum of the Palestinian people.
There is two levels for discussions on the terrorist organization, one is an international Global level and the other is a national level, we consider some organizations as terrorist, while others consider them as non-terrorist and vise versa, he said.
Bogdanov pointed out that Russia proposed 7 or 8 organizations to be enrolled in the terrorist organizations list, affirming that no one doubts about enlisting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Jabhat al-Nusra and the so-called Jaish al-Islam could be added to them.
Last Saturday, Bogdanov said that Moscow and Washington have exchanged lists of the terrorist organizations in Syria, asserting that the Russian and American lists are identical.
H. Zain/ Barry