Caretaker Lebanese Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil condemned on Monday recent Israeli allegations that the Hezbollah party had set up three locations near the airport to convert “inaccurate projectiles” into precision-guided missiles.
Such false claims are an attempt by Israel to “justify another aggression” against Lebanon, he declared.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made the allegations before the United Nations last week.
Bassil, speaking to foreign ambassadors before taking them on a tour of the area cited by Netanyahu, said there were “many statements ... affirming the possession of accurate missiles by Hezbollah”.
But he added: “This does not mean that these missiles are present in the vicinity of Beirut airport”.
Bassil accompanied the diplomats, who included Russian and Iranian envoys, and journalists on a tour of three sites near the Rafik Hariri International Airport, including the grounds of a top division Lebanese football team, Al-Ahed, which Israel identified as one of the sites.
Bassil, a political ally of Hezbollah, said Israel aimed to “falsify facts concerning Lebanon and to vocalize lies that carry the seeds of a threat that does not frighten us”.
Netanyahu had used the platform of the UN General Assembly “to justify another aggression on a sovereign country like Lebanon”.
Bassil also emphasized that Beirut will not accept that the Assembly be used as a platform to assault Lebanon's sovereignty.
He underlined Lebanon's right to defend itself and use all the legitimate resistance means to liberate its land from the Israeli occupation.
"Israel has violated our land, air and sea 1,417 times in the last eight months,” he told the ambassadors.
Hezbollah last fought a major conflict with Israel in 2006.
The Israeli military released a video clip and photos of what it said were Hezbollah rocket building sites in Beirut.
