(CNSNews.com) – Former President Jimmy Carter will not meet with Hezbollah during his current visit to Lebanon – not because he changed his mind about sitting down with a terrorist group linked to deadly attacks against Americans, but because Hezbollah refused to meet with him.
 
Although Carter is widely regarded as a strong critic of Israel and a proponent of talking to leaders and organizations hostile to the U.S., the Iranian-sponsored Shi’ite group viewed his desire for a meeting unfavorably.
 
“Hezbollah does not meet with anyone from a U.S. administration which supports Zionist terrorism,” Hezbollah’s al-Manar television station quoted Hezbollah lawmaker Mohamad Raad as saying Wednesday.
 
A Carter Center spokesman, Rick Jasculca, earlier told the AFP wire service that Hezbollah had declined a request to meet.
 
Lebanon’s English-language Daily Star in an editorial on Thursday took Hezbollah to task for turning down a meeting with Carter, implicitly equating its stance to those of pro-Israel groups that have “boycott[ed]” the former president for his views.
 
Noting Carter’s strong criticism of Israel, including the furor sparked by his controversial 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” the paper challenged Raad’s reasoning, asking why Hezbollah would refuse to meet with someone “who is no longer acting in an official government capacity and represents only himself and his charity in what appears to be an honest effort to facilitate dialogue.”
 
Carter’s visit aims to lay the groundwork for a Carter Center mission to observe the country’s elections scheduled for next spring, and he said he wished to meet with all political leaders.
 
CNSNews was among the first media outlets to report that a Hezbollah-Carter meeting may take place.
 
Raad said Hezbollah was not opposed to election monitors being sent to Lebanon and would “accept whatever decision the cabinet takes” in that regard.
 
Interior Minister Ziad Baroud on Thursday expressed some interest in the monitoring offer but said the cabinet would need to make a formal decision.
 
Analysts believe Hezbollah and its allies could win a majority in what is expected to be a tight race, an outcome that could have serious implications for Beirut’s future relations with the U.S.
 
A pro-Western government came to power in 2005 but after an 18-month political crisis – triggered by Hezbollah – a unity government was formed last July in which Hezbollah has the power to veto key decisions.
 
During his two-day visit Carter has held talks with Lebanon’s prime minister and president and visited U.N. peacekeepers in the south of the country, near the restive international border. Israel and Hezbollah fought a one-month war in the area in mid-2006 that cost the lives of 1,200 Lebanese and 160 Israelis.
 
A United Nations resolution ending the war called for Hezbollah to be disarmed but Israel claims that since then the organization has not only not done so but has expanded the size of its pre-war arsenal three-fold, with Syrian and Iranian help.

From Beirut, Carter goes to Damascus Saturday for a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad. Arab media report that he may also meet with officials from the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas. During a previous visit last April, Carter held talks with Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.
 
Washington keeps Syria on its list of terror-sponsoring states largely because of its support for Hezbollah and its support and provision of safe haven for Palestinian rejectionist groups including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, all of which are designated foreign terrorist organizations.
 
Hezbollah has been linked to numerous terrorist attacks, some as far afield as Europe and Latin America. The U.S. government holds it responsible for a series of 1983 suicide bombings in Beirut, including blasts at the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks that killed more than 300 people, most of them Americans.
 
“Prior to September 11, 2001, [Hezbollah] was responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist group,” the State Department says in its most recent annual report on international terrorism, released last April.