In a much-anticipated televised speech, Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrallah on Monday night presented what he called proof that Israel was behind the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
The Foreign Ministry dismissed Nasrallah's comments as "ridiculous lies" in a statement Tuesday.
“Since September 13, 1993, the date of the signing of the Oslo accords, Israel made up stories to convince former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri that Hizbullah planned to kill him,” Nasrallah said, according to a Walla news report of his speech. 
Nasrallah said he spoke to Syrian President Bashar Assad a couple of weeks before Hariri’s assassination, and that Assad told him – according to Western sources – that the world wanted to see Syrian troops leave Lebanon. “That is the reason Israel killed Hariri,” Nasrallah said. “Israel wanted to get Syria out of Lebanon.”
As proof of his theory, Nasrallah produced a tape of a man named Ahmed Nasrallah, who had been arrested in 1996 for allegedly spying for Israel. “I met someone who worked with Rafik Hariri and I told him that Hizbullah wants to kill him (Hariri),” the man was heard saying in the tape, referring to an apparent attempt to turn Hariri against Hizbullah.
