WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Wednesday it was freezing the assets of two Venezuelans, including a diplomat, it linked to Hezbollah and accused the Venezuelan government of protecting the two men.
World | Cuba
The announcement by the U.S. Treasury followed a long-running feud between Washington and Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez, whose country is the fifth-biggest foreign supplier of oil to the United States.
The Treasury named Ghazi Nasr al-Din and Fawzi Kan'an under an executive order which targets terrorists and those giving financial or material support to terrorism. The move prohibits Americans from doing business with the men and freezes any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction.
The Treasury said Nasr al-Din had been until recently the charge d'affaires at the Venezuelan Embassy in Damascus and was subsequently appointed director of political interests at the Venezuelan Embassy in Lebanon.
The Treasury also blacklisted two Caracas-based travel agencies owned and operated by Kan'an, Biblios Travel and Hilal Travel. It said Kan'an had facilitated travel for members of the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah and sent money raised in Venezuela to Hezbollah officials in Lebanon.
"It is extremely troubling to see the government of Venezuela employing and providing safe harbor to Hezbollah facilitators and fund-raisers," Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury's sanctions arm, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in a statement.
HEZBOLLAH DONORS
He said Nasr al-Din has counseled Hezbollah donors on fund-raising efforts and provided donors with specific information on bank accounts where deposits would go directly to Hezbollah.
The U.S. State Department criticized Chavez in its annual terrorism report this year, saying Venezuela had deepened its ties with Iran and Cuba, which it calls state sponsors of terrorism.
The report also cited a weekly flight between Venezuela and Tehran, which stops in Damascus, saying the passengers were not subjected to immigration and customs controls.
On Wednesday Fawzi Kan'an kept doing business at one of his travel agencies beneath an apartment block in Caracas, selling tickets to Arabic speaking customers. Speaking to reporters, he insisted he had nothing to do with Hezbollah or terrorism.
"Do you see any guns here? I've been here for more than 20 years, everything they are saying is a total lie," he said at the small one-room office decorated with posters of Lebanon and a picture of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar.
The United States has at times identified the Lebanese Muslim community on Venezuela's Caribbean island of Margarita as a threat, saying funds were raised there for the Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah group.
But while the U.S. Embassy in Caracas says it is vigilant about Margarita residents being "shaken down" by Hezbollah fundraisers, last year a spokesman said the island was not viewed as an immediate security risk.
In a separate action, Treasury said it had added to its terrorism blacklist two Uzbekistan-based leaders of the Islamic Jihad Union, a group it said was affiliated with al-Qaeda and wants to overthrow the Uzbek government.
Treasury said the action also bans U.S. dealings with and attempts to freeze assets of Najmiddin Kamolitdinovic Jalolov and Suhayl Fatilloevich Buranov, whom it said were organizers of suicide bombings in 2004 in Tashkent that killed at least 47 people.
(Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel and Brian Ellsworth in Caracas, editing by David Storey and Cynthia Osterman)
