A Dialogue with Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah with English Translation - Part 1/3

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is the secretary-general of the Lebanese political party Hezbollah. Although the United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization, three former U.S. diplomats had a chance to meet with Nasrallah in 2006, before Israel launched the Summer war on Lebanon. The diplomats were members of a delegation organized by the Council for the National Interest.

During the meeting, Nasrallah discussed Hezbollah's strategy to free Lebanese prisoners being held in Israel. He also spoke about the origins of Hezbollah, and recollected the role that the United Nations Security Council, the United States and member states of the Arab Union played in recent Lebanese history during which, they not only made no attempt to avail the Lebanese people of the occupation at the hands of Israel - who even laid siege to the Lebanese capital, Beirut - but instead supported the aggressions against Lebanon and labelled its' resistance movements as terrorists. He also recalled the reaction following an event - that was back in the news in the latest war on Lebanon — Israel's bombing of a UN observation post in the southern Lebanese town of Qana in 1996 which killed 106 Lebanese refugees.

One of the retired diplomats who met with Nasrallah in February was Edward Peck - he spoke to Democracy Now during the last war on Lebanon on what transpired during the meeting with Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. Edward Peck is the former U.S. chief of mission in Iraq and ambassador to Mauritania. He served as the deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan administration