BEIRUT, Lebanon, May 6 (UPI) -- U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon have no evidence of Scud missiles in their area of operations, a spokesman for the force said Thursday.
Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, the head of the Israeli army's intelligence research division, told lawmakers Tuesday in the Knesset that Syria had transferred long-range Scud missiles to Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
"Transfer of weaponry to Hezbollah is done regularly from Syria and is organized by the Syrian and Iranian regimes, and thus we should not call it weapons smuggling to Lebanon, but rather organized, real transfer," he said.
U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday that he was extending a state of emergency regarding Syrian because of its "support for terrorist organizations and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile programs."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for her part, told a Jewish organization in Washington in April that Syrian missile transfers, "especially longer-range missiles," to "terrorists" posed a serious threat to Israel.
But Neeraj Singh, a spokesman for the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, said peacekeepers in the south of Lebanon haven't confirmed the allegations.
"We have said that UNIFIL has not observed any Scud missiles and we have no evidence of any Scud missiles in our area of operations," he told United Press International in response to e-mail questions.
He stressed, however, the UNIFIL operations are limited to the southern extreme of Lebanon and its observations relate only to that area.
