North Korea arms plane ‘bound for Hezbollah’

Times Online:

James Hider, Jerusalem

An aircraft full of weapons seized in Bangkok last year was heading from North Korea to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, and Hamas, the Palestinian group, Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli Foreign Minister, said yesterday.

The Thai authorities said that the aircraft was carrying 35 tonnes of weapons, including rockets and rocket-propelled grenades. The Thai Government informed the UN that the haul had been bound for Iran, which is believed to ship weapons to its ally Syria, which distributes them to Hezbollah or Hamas.

North Korea had the “intention to smuggle these weapons to Hamas and to Hezbollah”, Mr Lieberman said in Japan, where he was on an official visit. “This co-operation between North Korea and Syria [does not] improve the economic situation in their countries,” he added.

Tensions on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon increased after Israel said that Syria had transferred new Scud missiles to Hezbollah, which has an estimated 42,000 rockets pointed at the Jewish state, with whom it fought a bitter summer war in 2006. The new rockets are believed capable of accuratelyhitting any target inside Israel, although Israel has developed its own missile system capable of bringing down incoming projectiles.

Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad has focused much of its attention on preventing weapons from Iran and Syria reaching their proxies on Israel’s borders, launching a long-range airstrike on a weapons convoy in Sudan in early 2009, and blowing up what was thought to be a nuclear facility under construction in Syria in 2007. That facility was believed to have been based on North Korean technology.

In January, Israel was widely believed to be behind the Dubai assassination of a senior Hamas militant overseeing the transfer of weapons from Iran to Gaza.