Hezbollah denies link to arms ship

By AMY TEIBEL Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli defense officials said hundreds of tons of weapons seized from a commandeered ship could have given Lebanese guerrillas an extra month of firepower in a war with Israel, but the militants denied Thursday that the arms were bound for them.

Israeli naval commandos, acting on intelligence reports, boarded the Antiguan-flagged Francop before dawn in waters off Cyprus on Wednesday and discovered that the cargo included hundreds of crates of rockets, missiles, mortars, anti-tank weapons and munitions. The weapons, Israel claims, came from Iran.

The arms shipment was the largest Israel has ever seized, and it shone a spotlight on dangerous tensions between Israel and the Islamic Republic. Israel considers Iran a strategic threat because of its nuclear program and long-range missile development, and says Tehran is lying when it denies it is building atomic arms.

Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group, which fought a bruising, monthlong war with Israel three years ago, denied Israeli claims the arms cache was meant for its fighters.

"Hezbollah categorically denies it has any connection with the weapons which the Zionist enemy claims it seized aboard the Francop ship," Hezbollah said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press in Beirut.

Israel had not provided evidence the arms were meant for Hezbollah.

State-run Iran TV said in a commentary that the "Israeli propaganda" was aimed at diverting attention from allegations of Israeli war crimes during last winter's war in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli defense officials said the weapons haul consisted of arms already in Hezbollah's possession, and would have given the Lebanese guerrilla group the ability to fight a full month longer in the event of a clash with Israel on the scale of the 2006 war.

Friction between Israel and Hezbollah have persisted since that conflict, but there has been no fighting. During that war, Hezbollah bombarded northern Israel with nearly 4,000 rockets.

The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the military has yet to formally comment on the potential value of the shipment's contents to militants.

The ship was released late Wednesday and set sail for Syria, the military said.

The weapons were sealed in containers carrying Iranian shipping codes and provided Israel with a rare opportunity to showcase its longtime claim that Tehran was arming militants on Israel's northern border - and implicitly, Hamas militants in Gaza.

Government spokesman Mark Regev said Thursday that he hopes the capture of the weapons will be a "wake-up call to those few in the international community who up until now have still held illusions about the true character of the extremist, radical regime in Tehran."

The presence of Iranian proxies in the Mideast, combined with worries over Tehran's nuclear program and arsenal of long-range missiles, have made Iran the Jewish state's most formidable foe.

Neutralizing Iran's bombmaking ability remains Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top priority - and Israel has not ruled out a military strike against Tehran's nuclear facilities.

The arms shipment eclipsed the previously largest haul, in 2002, of 50 tons of missiles, mortars, rifles and ammunition headed for Palestinian militants in Gaza. Israel has said that shipment came from Iran as well.

On Thursday, the U.N. General Assembly is expected to resume its discussion of a report accusing both Israel and Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers of war crimes during their conflict last winter. Both sides deny the charges.

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AP Writers Aron Heller and Michael Barajas in Jerusalem and Hussein Dakroub in Beirut contributed to this report.