Hollande aide meets Hezbollah official in Beirut

A French presidential aide has met with a senior official from the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, months after the European Union put the group’s military wing on its terrorist list.

Emmanuel Bonne, the French president’s adviser for Middle East affairs, held talks on Friday with Hezbollah’s international relations chief Ammar al-Moussawi in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, over regional and local developments.

A French embassy source said that Bonne arrived in Beirut for “talks with all political parties.”
The meeting is the first of its kind between a French official and a Hezbollah member since last June, when the European Union listed the Hezbollah military wing as a terrorist organization.
The Lebanese movement rejected the move as “aggressive” and “unjust.”