Lebanese President Michel Aoun renewed on Friday his rejection of Israeli allegations of the existence of weapons factories and caches in a number of Lebanese regions.
“The Israeli claims are baseless and the members of the diplomatic corps in Lebanon have confirmed this during their tour of these areas with caretaker Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil,” he told acting United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Pernille Dahler Kardel during a meeting at the Baabda presidential palace.
Lebanon is keen to preserve stability along its border with Israel and to implement UN Security Council resolution 1701, while Israel is continuously violating its sovereignty, he added.
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has also denied the existence of weapons in its areas of operation, he stated.
Kardel, for her part, informed Aoun that she will depart Beirut for New York to submit a regular report before the Security Council on the implementation of resolution 1701.
She expressed the UN’s satisfaction with the current cooperation between the Lebanese army and UNIFIL and the measures that are being taken to bolster the military.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had alleged in September that the Hezbollah party had set up three locations near the airport to convert “inaccurate projectiles” into precision-guided missiles.
In wake of the claims, Bassil took a number of diplomats on a tour of the locations cited by the Israeli PM.
The FM, 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,” he added.
