Israeli general cautions over Iran's Lebanon aid

Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed after a ceasefire ended a month of fighting with Israel on Monday that his Iranian-backed guerrilla group would help fund repairs for some 15,000 bomb-damaged homes across Lebanon.

"What I'm afraid of is that what is going to happen now is the Iranians will be the first people around to bring in huge amounts of money for reconstruction," Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior Israeli intelligence officer, said.

"We should be very much on alert to make sure that the international community, through its organisations, and not the Iranians, are those who are going to reconstruct," Kuperwasser told reporters.

Dismissing critics who say Israel failed to defeat Hizbollah decisively in 34 days of fighting, Kuperwasser said the war had begun to create a "real change", having moved the guerrillas away from the Israeli border.

He suggested this achievement could be eroded if Hizbollah were involved in rebuilding southern Lebanon which would bolster the group's influence in the border area.

Israel was wary of seeing Hizbollah charities such as Jihad al-Binaa (Holy Struggle for Construction), which has rebuilt scores of homes damaged by Israel in past battles, active again, Kuperwasser said.

"Otherwise, eventually, we (Israel) should go back to where we started," in the fight against Hizbollah, he said.

More than 1,100 people in Lebanon were killed in the offensive that Israel launched after Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a July 12 cross-border raid.

At least 157 Israelis died in the conflict, including soldiers in Lebanon and civilians killed by some of the 4,000 rockets Hizbollah rained on northern Israel during the war.

Iran has praised Hizbollah's fight against Israel but denies Israeli and American accusations that it arms the Lebanese group. Iranian leaders have also called for Israel's destruction.

Israeli tensions with Tehran also stem from the Jewish state's backing for Western efforts to thwart Iran's nuclear programme. Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear weapons power in the Middle East.

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