Nasrallah won't confirm or deny Scud possession

Hizbullah head calls claims an attempt to exert pressure on Lebanon and Syria, doesn't believe war with Israel on horizon.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
nasrallah 311 (photo credit: AP)
nasrallah 311
(photo credit: AP)
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah has refused to confirm or deny reports that Syria supplied his group with Scud missiles, merely saying overnight Thursday that the claims were an attempt to exert pressure on Lebanon and Syria.
Speaking to the Kuwaiti television network A-Rai, Nasrallah also said he didn’t believe a war with Israel was on the horizon.
“Today, it’s a claim of Scud missiles, and yesterday it was claims of other types of missiles,” he said. “But irrespective of the veracity of these accusations and of those likely to be made in the future, the aim is to scare Lebanon and Syria, and to pressure Lebanon, Syria and the resistance movement, as well as the Lebanese and Syrian people.”
The Hizbullah leader said that “all this noise is being made by those occupying Palestine - and it’s to our benefit, not to the benefit of Israel.”
He said he “wouldn’t say a war is close,” and that the Israel and the US were causing commotion about an upcoming conflict “because they want to achieve certain military, psychological and security goals without being forced to go to war.”
Nasrallah warned that while Hizbullah could easily perpetrate an attack on Israeli tourists aboard, the group “knows who to target.”
In a message posted on his Web site later Friday, Nasrallah said that while he wouldn't speak about the Scuds "through the media," if a war broke out, Hizbullah would live up to its promises to attack Israeli infrastructure.