Russia Distances Herself from Belarus :: Charter'97 :: News

On Tuesday the Lebanese media initiated a scandal, touching upon the interests of both Russia and Belarus. Today in the airport of Beirut they seized 12 tons of cargo with “tank intercom head-sets and radio equipment” for Iraq, reports the Arabic newspaper “Al-Hayat”. According to the newspaper, the cargo was transported by air from Belarus two days ago. However, the newspaper’s heading read “Beirut police seizes in airport Russian military equipment en route to Iraq”.

The customs officers grew suspicious when they saw that some of the boxes had the name of the cargo, mentioned in them – head-sets -, while other – didn’t have any label. When the boxes were opened, police found 625 head-sets and 240 sets of radio equipment for tanks. In course of the investigation it turned out that the cargo belonged to two Lebanese businessmen, running a company of ground transportation.

The cargo was confiscated and passed over to the Lebanese military, while both businessmen got arrested, reports the newspaper.

RIA “Novosti” was told by the military attaché of the Russian embassy Boris Soldatov that “Russia has nothing to do with that”.