Ahmadinejad meets Hezbollah's leader in Damascus

DAMASCUS, July 19 (Reuters) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah in the Syrian capital today, witnesses said.

Ahmadinejad is on a one day visit to Syria. Representatives of several Palestinian groups opposed to President Mahmoud Abbas, which have offices in Damascus, also attended the meeting, the witnesses said.

Iran and Syria are main backers of Hezbollah, a Shi'ite group that fought a war with Israel last year and holds two Israeli soldiers it wants to exchange for Arab prisoners held by the Jewish state.

Syria has denied Western accusations of an alleged flow through its territory of Iranian-supplied weapons to Hezbollah, which the United States considers a terrorist group but Damascus and Tehran regard as a resistance movement.

Links between Lebanon's large Shi'ite community and Iran go back for centuries.

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