Britain has little confidence that Iran will stop providing military and financial support to Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrillas soon, if at all, a British government minister said on Wednesday. Kim Howells, foreign office minister for the Middle East, said he had no doubt Iran was supplying Hizbollah with missiles, guns and money, via Syria.
"One wonders if they (Iran) could ever succumb to the diplomatic temptation to renounce their support of Hizbollah when it is the one really effective military force they've got in that region outside Iran themselves," Howells told an emergency session of parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.
The meeting was called to discuss the government's stance on the recent 34-day Israel-Lebanon war, sparked by Hizbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. Howells was also pessimistic about the chances of disarming Hizbollah or persuading the group to put down its weapons, given how entrenched it was in Lebanon.
Comments
Comments are closed.