The United States on Friday put the Hezbollah television station al-Manar on its list of terrorist organizations.

The State Department announced that the Lebanon-based television station, which has been banned from broadcasting in France, had been added to its Terrorist Exclusion List.

"The fact is that Hezbollah is an active terrorist organization," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a regular news briefing.

The United States has already designated Hizbollah as a foreign terrorist organization, and the State Department has been open in its criticism of al-Manar's satellite television programs.

"We consider (al-Manar) to be disgusting programming that preaches hatred and violence and ... ideas that are antithetical to the values which we believe in," deputy spokesman of the State Department Adam Ereli said at a briefing on Dec. 9.

France on Monday stopped Al-Manar using a French satellite network to transmit to Europe, accusing it of broadcasting hateful content in some shows and posing risks to public order.
 
(Xinhua News Agency December 18, 2004)