Naharnet: "Lebanon Will Use Confiscated Hizbullah Arms to Fight Israel"

Good thing they confiscated those weapons:

Defense Minister Elias Murr, who rejected Hizbullah demands that a truckload of weapons seized by Lebanese authorities be returned to the group, has said the army will keep the ammunition and use it if Israel attacks.

"The truck and the weapons are now with the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon," Murr said after talks Friday with the new commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, Major General Claudio Graziano.

"If Israel carries out another violation, we will use these weapons to confront it," he said.

Murr said he told Graziano that "the Lebanese army deployed in southern Lebanon has orders to confront Israeli forces in case of any new violation" of Lebanese sovereignty.

The shipment was seized on Thursday in the Hazmieh suburb east of Beirut, raising tension between Hizbullah and Prime Minister Fouad Saniora's government, which are engaged in a power struggle.

U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman sharply criticized Hizbullah for the arms shipment, which according to the daily An Nahar included forty-eight 60mm mortars, sixty 120mm mortars, 52 Grad rockets and 118 cases of mortar shells.

"We've heard Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah talk very proudly of the weapons his organization already has. So one has to ask what are these for now?" he asked Friday.

Nasrallah boasted soon after a cease-fire ended the July-August war between his guerrillas and Israeli forces that his group had replenished its arsenal of rockets, numbering some 33,000.

Hizbullah had acknowledged the ammunition seized Thursday belonged to the group and demanded the government immediately release the shipment. It urged the government to abide by its own policy, proclaimed in 2005, to support the "resistance" in the south. [...]

Don't miss Caroline Glick's latest, "Israel Bumbles Into War."

Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Lebanon, Hizbullah