Last update - 00:00 09/02/2007
Lebanese minister: Seized Hezbollah arms will be used by army
By The Associated Press
Lebanon's defense minister said on Friday that a truckload of ammunition belonging to the Hezbollah seized the previous day in an east Beirut suburb, would be used by the Lebanese army in case of future Israeli attacks.
Defense Minister Elias Murr said the ammunitions would not be returned to the Hezbollah as the militants demanded after the seizure Thursday.
"The truck and the weapons are now in the south ... and we will use them tomorrow morning if there is an Israeli violation," Murr said after talks with the new commander of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, Major-General Claudio Graziano of Italy.
Murr's comments are likely to add to tensions in the ongoing power struggle between the U.S.-backed government in Beirut and the Hezbollah-led opposition seeking to topple it.
The Shiite Muslim Hezbollah had acknowledged the ammunition belonged to the guerrilla group and demanded the government immediately release the shipment.
It urged the government to abide by its own policy, proclaimed in 2005, to support the resistance in the south - which is Lebanese shorthand for the guerrilla.
In a televised interview late Thursday, Murr criticized Hezbollah's statement, saying he would have liked to see the group offer the shipment to the Lebanese army which on Wednesday engaged in a shootout with Israeli troops on the tense Israel-Lebanon-border.
It was the most serious clash since last summer's war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Under a UN resolution that ended the war, Hezbollah is banned from rearming.
But Murr said in the interview that the truckload of ammunition came from within Lebanon. Not even a mosquito could cross the Syrian-Lebanese border, he said, in references to allegations of Syrian assistance to Hezbollah.