Defense official says Syria delivering arms to group with Lebanon's knowledge.
By JPOST.COM STAFFjp.services2(photo credit: )
Hizbullah has restored its military capability and replenished its stockpiles of weapons and missiles since the end of the Second Lebanon War, Israel Radio quoted a senior defense official as saying Tuesday morning.
The official claimed that Syria was transferring weapons to Hizbullah with the full knowledge of the Lebanese army and behind UNIFIL's back.
He said that Hizbullah didn't want to ignite the region at the moment but preferred a period of quiet so that it could restore the sites from which the rockets were launched during last summer's war.
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On Monday, Hizbullah Chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah refused to say whether kidnapped reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were alive.
"The French foreign minister understood that they are alive, but our people do not tend to answer questions of this kind," said Nasrallah in an interview with Al Jazeera, broadcast by Qatari-based satellite television.
The head of the guerrilla group was referring to a recent statement made by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner who said that he "understood" the soldiers were alive after talks with Hizbullah officials in Paris last week.
Nasrallah claimed that he was the sole official authorized to give details on the matter and added that "for every utterance such as this we can receive human compensation, and therefore there is no reason that we would give information for free."
During an earlier section of the same interview released Sunday, Nasrallah announced that Hizbullah had the ability to launch rockets against any point in Israel.
Hizbullah had the capability to strike every part of Israel during last summer's war, and retains that capability, he said. "Even in the months of July and August 2006 there was not one place in occupied Palestine that we could not reach, every point and every corner," Nasrallah was quoted as saying. "I stress that we can do this today as well."
