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Hezbollah CIA allegation 'empty': US

The US embassy has denied Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's charges that the Central Intelligence Agency had infiltrated his group in Lebanon.

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Source: AFP


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Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's charges that the Central Intelligence Agency had infiltrated his group in Lebanon were "empty accusations," a US embassy spokesperson said Friday.

"These are the same kinds of empty accusations that we have repeatedly heard from Hezbollah," the spokesperson told AFP shortly after Nasrallah made the allegations in a televised speech.

"There is no substance to his accusation," he added. "It appears as if Nasrallah was addressing internal problems within Hezbollah with which we have nothing to do.

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"Our position towards Hezbollah is well known and has not changed."

Nasrallah on Friday said two members of his Shiite militant movement had confessed to being CIA agents and accused arch-foe Israel of turning to the US spy agency after itself failing to infiltrate his Iran-backed party.

Nasrallah also said the group was investigating whether a third member of the party had been recruited by the CIA, Israel's Mossad or the intelligence service of a European country.

It was the first such acknowledgment of infiltration by Hezbollah, which prides itself on the discipline of its members, since its establishment in the 1980s.

Washington blacklists Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.


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