Hezbollah denies Israel's arms ship claims
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By Press TV
News Article
Friday, Nov 6, 2009
Lebanon's Hezbollah has strongly rejected
Israeli allegations that a huge shipment of arms seized by Tel Aviv
forces was bound to reach the resistance movement.
"Hezbollah staunchly denies any link to the weapons that the
Zionist enemy has seized from the Francop ship," Hezbollah said in a
statement released on Thursday.
"At the same time, Hezbollah denounces Israel's piracy in international waters," it added.
The statement comes a day after Israel claimed to have seized a
huge cache of weapons after storming the Antigua-flagged vessel Francop
around 100 nautical miles from the occupied Palestine.
Tel Aviv asserted the arms shipment was destined either for
Hezbollah or Syria, indicating the vessel was carrying 'hundreds of
kilograms of Iranian-made arms' to Israel's archenemy, which parried
its offensive on southern Lebanon in 2006.
"We found dozens of containers, with hundreds of tons of arms bound
for Hezbollah from Iran," Israel's deputy naval commander, Rani Ben
Yehuda, told reporters on Wednesday.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, in a joint press
conference with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Muallem on Wednesday,
dismissed the allegations on the cargo's destination and its direction
of passage.
His remarks were backed by al-Muallem, who asserted that contrary
to Israeli claims, 'the ship was not carrying Iranian-made weaponry for
Syria or Lebanon', but was in fact carrying Syrian-made items for
consumption in Iran.
The new accusations follow a report by UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon to the Security Council on Israeli allegations about weapons
smuggling to Hezbollah.
Ban's report said the claims could not independently verify the
information, adding that the Lebanese government had not informed the
UN of a single incident of weapons smuggling to its territory, whether
by land, sea or air.
The UN Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 summer war on Lebanon,
limits the delivery of weapons to the Lebanese government only.
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