03 July 2007
Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, has suggested that Iran could be linked to the Hamas military takeover of Gaza, as well as to recent attacks on the Lebanese army and on European peacekeepers in Lebanon.
"What happened in Gaza cannot be seen separately from what happened in Lebanon," he said during a two-day conference in Brussels on the Middle East organized by the Socialist group in the European Parliament. "There are new groups in the Palestinian camps," Solana is quoted as saying. He added: "And the fact that UNIFIL has been attacked for the first time cannot be taken separately."
Solana’s spokesperson later said the statements attributed to the EU official were misinterpretated: "Mr. Solana did not make any links. He didn’t’ say so," Christina Gallach said. According to the “Reuters” news agency, Javier Solana stopped short of blaming Tehran outright, but said the incidents could not be treated separately.
Solana said that while the car bomb attack that killed six Spanish members of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on 24 June was carried out by "forces we don’t know", he added: "It would be naive not to see this as part of a global approach." "Somebody I know well – Ali Larijani – has said ’we are supporting Hamas’," he said in a reference to the chief Iranian negotiator on the nuclear program. He had made this statement in an interview with “Newsweek” last month.
