The United States should conduct military strikes against Hezbollah and Hamas facilities in the Middle East before engaging in any military action against Iraq, the leaders of an influential US Senate committee demanded Sunday.
Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham and his Republican counterpart, Richard Shelby, made their recommendation amid increasing concern among member of the US intelligence community that if faced with certain downfall, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein could hand over weapons of mass destruction to regional terrorist groups.
"Against those international terrorists such as Hezbollah and Hamas, we need to be launching attacks on their headquarters and their training camps so that they will not be in a position to provide support for their terrorists that are embedded in the United States or be developing the next generation of terrorists," said Graham, appearing on CNN's "Late Edition" program.
Shelby, interviewed on the same show, agreed.
"Hezbollah and some others are probably the A team, not the B team or the C team, as far as potential terrorist threats to this country," he said.
The White House had no immediate comment. But if accepted, the plan would represent a dramatic broadening of the war on terror, which so far has been focused on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States.
President George W. Bush and other US officials have repeatedly mentioned the possibility of Iraqi transfers of chemical or biological weapons to groups bent on causing harm to Israel and the United States as the prime rationale for seeking the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power.
But Washington has refrained from direct military action against most of the organizations mentioned on the State Department's terrorism list because of diplomatic consideration, according to US officials.
Hezbollah, which has extensive bases and training camps in Lebanon as well as cells in various part of the world, enjoys strong material support of Iran and Syria, the officials said.
The radical Shiite group is blamed for the 1993 suicide truck bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, and the 1985 hijacking of a Trans World Airlines plane, during which a US Navy diver was murdered. It is also the chief suspect in the 1994 bombing of an Israeli cultural center in Buenos Aires.
The Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, operates primarily from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and draws its financial support from Palestinian expatriates, Iran, and private benefactors in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, according to the officials.
Hamas has claimed responsibility for scores of suicide bombings in Israel, but so far has not directly struck any US targets.
With the White House considering military action against Iraq, Graham warned it would be dangerous to move against Baghdad without first neutralizing these groups that could be recruited by Iraq for revenge missions and inherit its weapons of mass destruction.
"In my judgment, it is a dereliction of duty to the American people not to disable those organizations to the maximum extent possible before we get into that position where we are the bull's eye of Saddam Hussein's attack, and we have the capability of such disablement," the senator said.
Graham argued that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who he said has control over Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, should be given an ultimatum: "We expect you to take care of this problem, but if you don't, we're going to take care of this problem," he said.
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