Doha, April 27: Israel is seeking to justify a new war on Lebanon by alleging that Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah has obtained Scud missiles, Prime Minister Saad Hariri said in remarks to a Qatari newspaper.
“We reject the allegations … (Israel) is trying to justify a war against Lebanon that it could launch when it wishes,” Hariri said in an interview with Al-Watan to be published on Thursday.
“Where is the proof that Hezbollah has these missiles,” Hariri asked, adding that “Israel possesses nuclear weapons.”
He also refused “to ask Hezbollah to deny the possession of such weapons,” saying, “Why put ourselves in the position of being accused, and why give Israel the right to make such accusations?”
On Tuesday, Lebanese President Michel Sleiman took a similar stance, dismissing the Scud charges as “Israeli inventions.”
“A war against Lebanon will not be an easy task and Israel knows that,” a statement quoted Sleiman as saying during a visit to Brazil. “If the Jewish state wants war, it will find that Lebanon is ready to defend itself.”
Israeli President Shimon Peres has accused Syria of providing Hezbollah with the missiles.
And a senior US State Department official said last week said Washington was “concerned with the broadening nature of cooperation between Syria and Hezbollah.”
Damascus is “providing a wider array of missiles to Hezbollah,” added the diplomat, who asked not to be named and who refused to accuse Syria of delivering the high-grade weapons to Hezbollah.
Syria has rejected the allegation it transferred the missiles.
Israel waged a bloody 34-day war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and fighting claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.
Hezbollah, originally a resistance group formed to counter an Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, had forced the Israeli military out of Lebanon in 2000. Israel, however, continues to occupy the Lebanese Shabaa Farms.
Israeli flights over Lebanon occur on an almost daily basis and are in breach of UN Security Council resolution 1710, which in August 2006 ended the war.
—Agencies