BICOM

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah yesterday emphasised the strategic cooperation between his organisation and President Assad’s regime in Syria during a television appearance in Lebanon.

Nasrallah made reference to last weekend’s air strikes, widely attributed to Israel, which targeted Syrian military installations near Damascus thought to be storing sophisticated Iranian weaponry destined for Hezbollah. Nasrallah said, “You Israelis say your objective is to stop the capability of the resistance [Hezbollah] from growing” before threatening that “Syria will provide [Hezbollah] with game-changing weapons it has not had before.” Nasrallah claimed that such armaments would “break the power balance” with Israel. He also pledged “material and spiritual support” to help Syria “liberate” the Golan Heights from Israeli control.

In Syria itself, the United Nations (UN) has withdrawn its peacekeepers from a station in the Syrian sector of the Golan Heights due to security fears after four of its personnel were abducted this week by an Islamist opposition group. UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said that the UN force “continues to do its utmost to ensure the implementation of its mandate while mitigating risk to its personnel.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron will today meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Russia is a staunch ally of Syria’s President Assad. Cameron told the House of Commons on Wednesday that “There’s an urgent need to start a proper negotiation to force a political transition and to bring this conflict to an end, and I will… meet with President Putin to discuss this issue further.” The Daily Telegraph claims that Cameron will also suggest that London hosts an international conference on Syria, suggested earlier this week by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, as a chance to bring Syrian government officials and opposition leaders together for talks.