Reuters: Britain has little confidence that Iran will stop providing military and financial support to Lebanon’s Hizbollah guerrillas soon, if at all, a government minister said on Wednesday. LONDON (Reuters) – Britain has little confidence that Iran will stop providing military and financial support to Lebanon’s Hizbollah guerrillas soon, if at all, a government minister said on Wednesday.
Kim Howells, foreign office minister for the Middle East, said he had no doubt Iran was supplying Hizbollah with missiles, guns and money via Syria.
He said he had pressed Iran’s ambassador to London Rasul Movahedian on this in recent talks.
“One wonders if they (Iran) could ever succumb to the diplomatic temptation to renounce their support of Hizbollah when it is the one really effective military force they’ve got in that region outside Iran themselves,” Howells told an emergency session of parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
The meeting was called to discuss the government’s stance on the Israel-Lebanon war.
During the conflict, Prime Minister Tony Blair came under fire from Labour MPs for failing to call for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah.
Blair argued that an instant ceasefire would not hold and that he was working for a durable solution.
Howells defended the government’s stance, saying that while it caused hostility in the Arab world, it has since been proved right.
