JERUSALEM: Israel's defence minister claimed on Thursday that the militant Lebanese Hezbollah group has stockpiled 40,000 rockets and warned the Jewish state would get tough in case of a conflict with Lebanon.
'We cannot accept that a neighbouring UN member state should have in its government representatives of a militia that has more than 40,000 rockets,' Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Israeli public radio.
'If there is a conflict on our northern border, we will use all necessary force,' he said.
'What happened in the second Lebanon war will not happen again ... at the time a message from the United States indicated we must spare Lebanon's infrastructure,' the minister said.
Israel, which considers Hezbollah a terror group, fought a 34-day war with the Shia militia in July-August 2006, in which more than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed in Lebanon and 160 in Israel, most of them soldiers.
'Hezbollah continues arming itself and we must ensure certain types of weapon should not enter Lebanon,' Barak said. -AFP
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