An-Nahar newspaper quoted army commander Jean Kahwaji on Saturday as denying it would be possible to bring Scuds across the Lebanese border undetected. The allegations, which appeared April 10 in a Kuwaiti newspaper, initially caused consternation in Washington and drew denials from the Lebanese and Syrian governments.

Kahwaji said Scuds were not like the easily mobile Katyusha rockets, Hezbollah's weapon of choice when the group fought a war with Israel in 2006. "The process of transporting them is not a game, it's a very big operation. I'm convinced there are no scuds in Lebanon and talk about the issue is political," said Kahwaji.

Israeli President Shimon Peres has backed the allegations.

But on Friday Defense Minister Ehud Barak stopped short of saying whether Hezbollah actually possessed Scuds, saying only he assumed that it had sought them.

Moving Scuds into Lebanon might draw pre-emptive Israeli strikes. US officials said on Thursday they had no indications any had been shipped into the country, although Washington suspected that some kind of transfer may have occurred in Syria.