Damascus has been telling United Nations officials that Lebanon is
smuggling weapons into Syria rather than the other way around, diplomats said this week.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's chief of staff, Yoram Turbowicz, said he was
su

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surprised when the UN envoy to the Middle East, who arrived in Israel several days ago, told him that the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations denies that weapons are being smuggled from Syria to Lebanon. The envoy, Michael Williams, told Turbowicz that the ambassador showed him intelligence material appearing to support the Syrian position.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has made a similar argument to UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon, a diplomatic source in Jerusalem said. He said that
meeting, in which Assad displayed photographs of weapons he said were smuggled into Syria, has become something of a joke at UN headquarters.

Williams, meanwhile, said he plans to go to Damascus next week to continue discussing weapons-smuggling. Olmert told the UN envoy that he wants to increase cooperation with Ban.