BEIRUT: Hezbollah on Wednesday shot back at US charges it was stockpiling sophisticated weapons, accusing Washington of destabilizing the Middle East and vowing to continue to build its artillery.
"The resistance has the right to use all legitimate means to build its capacity to defend Lebanon," Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah told AFP on Wednesday.
"US arms are annihilating the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon and are the cause of all suffering in the region," he added.
"They are the principle factor destabilizing the region, undermining its security and preventing development."
Fadlallah also accused the United States of "waging a diplomatic and political battle" in order to help its ally Israel maintain the upper hand in regional military prowess.
"The United States is asking us to accept Israel’s alleged superiority to ensure Israel remains capable of launching attacks at its will while we are stripped of the ability to face these aggressions," he said.
"We have no interest in acceding to these attempts to concretize Israeli superiority," Fadlallah added.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday accused Iran and Syria of arming Hezbollah with increasingly sophisticated rockets and missiles which he said undermined stability in the region.
Hezbollah had "far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world, and this is obviously destabilizing for the whole region and we’re watching it very carefully," Gates said at a joint news conference with his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak in Washington.
His comments came amid heightened tension in the Middle East after Israel earlier this month accused Syria of smuggling Scud ballistic missiles to Lebanese ally Hezbollah, the only group that did not disarm after Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.
In comments published Wednesday in the Arabic-language newspaper As-Safir, which is close to Hezbollah, Fadlallah said Hezbollah’s arms do not compare to "the level of armament of the United States, which it used in its crimes against peoples around the world, from Hiroshima to the more than 100,000 martyrs killed in Iraq and the tens of thousands killed in Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan."
The daily ran a front-page headline that read "Washington and Tel Aviv push missile hoax to brink of war," echoing rising fears of renewed conflict in the region.
