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Israel says it seized Iranian arms shipment for Hezbollah
Ashdod, Israel (AFP) Nov 4, 2009 Israel said on Wednesday that commandos had intercepted a ship carrying "hundreds of tonnes" of arms from Iran to Hezbollah in a raid dozens of miles off its coast but both Iran and Syria denied the cargo was headed to the Lebanese militia. "We found dozens of containers, with hundreds of tonnes of arms bound for Hezbollah from Iran," Israeli deputy naval commander Rani Ben Yehuda told reporters. The shipment was among the largest ever seized by Israel, dwarfing the 50 tonnes of weapons found aboard the Karine A seized in 2002 on its way to Gaza, which dealt a major blow to relations between the Palestinians and Washington. At the Mediterranean port of Ashdod, soldiers pulled hundreds of olive-green ammunition crates from shipping containers, many of them concealed by sacks of cement. They were then divided into huge stacks of rockets of various sizes, mortar rounds, hand grenades and ammunition for AK-47 rifles. Many of the weapons crates had inscriptions in Spanish, Chinese and English. The military had earlier announced that it had seized the 137-metre (450-foot) Antigua-flagged vessel Francop before dawn around 100 nautical miles from the Israeli coast. Ben Yehuda said the captain of the ship was unaware of the contents of his cargo and had agreed to allow Israeli forces to board and inspect his ship. He said the cargo manifest for the seized crates indicated they were headed from Iran to Syria, but Israel offered no direct proof to implicate Iran or Hezbollah, and the Lebanese group declined to comment on the incident. Both Iran and Syria rejected Israel's accusations about the ship's destination and direction of passage. At a joint news conference with his visiting Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki dismissed the allegations out of hand, the state-run English-language broadcaster Press TV reported on its website. Muallem echoed the denial. "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 website quoted the Syrian minister as saying. Iran and Syria are the main foreign backers of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah but both deny that they provide anything other than moral support. A UN Security Council resolution which brought an end to the devastating 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel demanded the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon and imposed a ban on all arms exports to them. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the arms seized were "further proof, if any is needed, that Iran is continuing to provide weapons to terrorist organisations that want to strike Israeli towns and villages and kill civilians." "It is high time the international community put pressure on Iran to stop its criminal actions and backed Israel when it defends itself," he added as the UN General Assembly prepared to discuss a report deeply critical of both Israel and Palestinian militants' conduct of the Gaza war at the turn of the year. Defence Minister Ehud Barak said the ship was captured "near Cyprus," without elaborating on whether it was in Cypriot or international waters at the time. Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported that the ship set out from Iran and later docked in Yemen and Sudan before passing through the Suez Canal en route to either Syria or Lebanon. Israel has long accused arch-foes Syria and Iran of supplying weapons to Hezbollah and to Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, which has been ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement since June 2007. Israel has in the past seized shipments of weapons allegedly bound for Gaza, and on January 3, 2002, at the height of a Palestinian uprising, Israel intercepted the Karine A in the Red Sea where it was bound for Gaza. The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat admitted responsibility for the smuggling attempt, and the affair eroded his standing with Washington. burs/kir Share This Article With Planet Earth
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France on arms sales spree in S. AmericaBuenos Aires (UPI) Nov 3, 2009 France is pursuing further arms sales in Latin America after its extensive weapons deal with Brazil and is hoping to persuade Argentina to become its next big customer for military hardware. French Defense Minister Herve Morin, currently on a Latin American tour, told Argentine government leaders during a visit to the capital France could help the country recapture its pre-eminence thro ... read more |
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