Beirut - Visiting former US President Jimmy Carter said Thursday during his meeting with Lebanese parliamentarians and politicians that he would study the possibility of sending a Carter Centre representative to monitor the 2009 elections if Lebanese authorities agreed.

"The inspectors would not intervene in the electoral process, but would try to implement the electoral law," Carter told Lebanese MPs at the parliament house in downtown Beirut.

Carter, who arrived in Beirut on Tuesday, is in Lebanon to assess whether his non-profit Carter Centre will monitor the country's parliamentary elections set for next May.

The former US president met on Wednesday with UN peacekeeping force commander, Major General Claudio Graziano, and took a helicopter tour of southern Lebanon.

The 13,000-member UN force (known as UNIFIL) was deployed after the one-month war in 2006 between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. The fighting killed about 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and nearly 160 Israelis.

In a statement released by UNIFIL, Carter was quoted as saying that the deployment of UN peacekeepers near the Israel-Lebanon border - together with Lebanese troops
- have helped create a new sense of security in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah has turned down a request by Carter to meet officials from the group, because of what they said was a long-held decision not to receive any American official.

Washington, who lists Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations, blames the group for the explosion that killed 241 US Marines at their Beirut barracks in 1983, as well as for two attacks on the US Embassy in Beirut, and the 1985 TWA hijacking that killed an American serviceman on board.

Hezbollah denies the accusations and says it opposes terrorism. Carter was widely criticized in April when he met in Syria with the exiled Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal. The US also labels Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, a terrorist organization. (dpa)