BEIRUT (AL-MANAR TV)- Noam Chomsky, the famous U.S. intellectual who is a vocal critic of U.S and Israeli policies, visited Hezbollah's headquarters and met Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in the southern suburb of Beirut on May 13 which was once called the plague of the Middle East by former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz.

No doubt that the meeting was striking. Chomsky disregarded U.S. warnings for its nationals not to go to Lebanon. In his meeting with Nasrallah, Chomsky said Hezbollah's insistence on keeping its arms is justified. Chomsky clearly stated, "I think Nasrallah has a reasoned argument and persuasive argument that they should be in the hands of Hezbollah (the arms) as a deterrent to potential aggression, and there are plenty of background reasons for that. So until, I think his position reporting it correctly and it seems to me reasonable position, is that until there is a general political settlement in the region, the threat of aggression and violence is reduced or eliminated there has to be a deterrent, and the Lebanese army can't be a deterrent."

When asked about the U.S. list of terrorist states, he said if the U.S. was to stick to the clear and precise definition of terrorism in its code of laws, it would be the leading terrorist state.

Chomsky said "... I've been writing about terrorism for the last 25 years, always using the official U.S. definition, but that definition is unusable, and the reason is when you use that definition it turns out, not surprisingly, that the U.S. is one of the leading terrorist states. And other states become terrorist or non-terrorist depending on how they are relating to U.S. goals.

"So, for example, Iraq was a terrorist state up until 1982. In 1982 it was removed from the list of terrorist states and the reason was that the Reagan administration wanted to provide Saddam Hussein with aid, meaning all equipment of mass destruction, weapons, and so on, and therefore it was removed from the list of terrorist states. It was no longer a terrorist state. And the same goes for Syria. Syria has been on the terrorist list for a long time. But in 1994, I think it was that Clinton offered to remove Syria from the list of terrorist states if it agreed to U.S.-Israeli proposals for the settlement of the Golan Heights issue. Well, Syria wanted to get its territory back so it stayed on the list of terrorist states."

Chomsky said he got what he expected from this meeting: a reasoned and intelligent analysis of the Lebanese situation and the international situation. He said he learned a lot of things that he wouldn't have known. Chomsky also visited the Shatila camp of Palestinian refugees, the scene of the Israeli-led massacre in 1982.