Syria or Iran continues to provide weapons to Hizbullah in Lebanon in violation of a UN arms embargo, a senior US official said Wednesday. "The border between Lebanon and Syria remains highly porous," Assistant Secretary of State David Welch told a Congressional panel.
Welch said that Washington agreed with a recent report by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asserting "serious breaches" of the arms embargo imposed under a Security Council resolution which ended last year's summer war with Israel.
"It is clear in [Ban's] judgment, and it is clear in our own independent [judgment] that Hizbullah continues to rearm and we can see no other source for such assistance than Syria or Iran," said Welch, the top State Department official for the Middle East.
"We are encouraging the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL to take a more assertive role in stopping smuggling," he said, referring to an expanded United Nations peacekeeping force deployed in Lebanon following the July-August war. (...)
Welch was speaking after the Security Council on Tuesday asked Ban to send an independent mission to investigate reports of illegal arms movements across the Lebanese-Syrian border.
The council expressed its "serious concern at mounting information by Israel and another state" of arms smuggling across the border in violation of UN resolution 1701.
Syria has denied that arms are making their way over the border into Lebanon and warned against any moves to station international troops along the frontier in Lebanon, which Damascus occupied for 30 years until being forced by popular protests to withdraw following Hariri's assassination. (...)
On Tuesday, all 15 members of the council unanimously adopted the statement, calling on Ban "to dispatch at the earliest, in close liaison with the Lebanese government, an independent mission to fully assess the monitoring of the border." (...)
The statement did, however, take note of the fact that the Syrian government has been cooperating and has attempted to prevent the smuggling of arms across its border. Nonetheless, it reiterated its call on Syria "to take further measures to reinforce controls at the border." (...)
Hizbullah refuses to relinquish their arms before an Israeli withdrawal from the farms, claiming them as the last piece of Lebanese land to remain under occupation. Israel refuses to leave, claiming the territory is part of the Golan Heights, and therefore Syrian land, albeit occupied. The UN expects the official demarcation to be completed by mid-June.
Source : The Daily Star