BEIRUT, Lebanon (Islamweb & Agencies) - The leader of the Lebanese Islamic Resistance group, Hezbollah said Monday that U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon will be considered spies if the world body shows Israel a videotape filmed after last year's capture of three Israeli soldiers.
Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, speaking at a conference of Arab political parties in Beirut, said showing the tape will not help Israelis determine the fate of their soldiers.
Despite a second formal request by Israel to get an unedited copy of the tape, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York Monday that the tape will not be turned over to Israel.
The U.N. force has a mandate to observe conditions along the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Under pressure from Israel, the United Nations said Friday it will allow Israeli officials to view the video shot by a peacekeeper a day after three Israeli occupation soldiers were seized by the Resistance Oct. 7. It said the faces of any people not members of the U.N. contingent would be blocked out.
In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan Sunday, Israel's war Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said U.N. peacekeepers should have prevented the soldiers' capture and demanded the United Nations hand over the unedited tape.
U.N. officials have acknowledged the tape indicates the Hezbollah kidnappers probably masqueraded as U.N. peacekeepers.
Hezbollah says it wants to trade the three soldiers and a retired Israeli colonel, captured separately, for an unspecified number of Lebanese and other Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah gestures during a conference of Arab political parties in Beirut Monday, July 9, 2001. Nasrallah warned the United Nations that handing over a tape showing the scene where three Israeli soldiers were captured by Hezbollah Resistance men as last year would be tantamount to spying. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)