Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman declared that North Korea, Syria and Iran the new "axis of evil" on Wednesday during his visit to Japan.
The foreign minister said that the three countries are cooperating and pose the biggest threat to world security because they are building and spreading weapons of mass destruction.
"We saw this kind of cooperation only two or maybe three months ago with the North Korean plane in Bangkok with huge numbers of different weapons with the intention to smuggle these weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah," Lieberman said.
Originally the term "Axis of evil" was used in President George W. Bush's first State of the Union address in 2002, where he named North Korea, Iran and Iraq as threats to the United States.
Acting on a tip from the United States, Thai authorities on Dec. 12 seized an Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang when it landed in Bangkok. It was carrying 35 tons of weapons — a violation of U.N. sanctions against North Korea.
Flight documents indicated the plane's cargo — listed as oil drilling equipment — was headed for the Iranian capital Tehran. Iranian officials denied they were importing weapons.
Analysts have said that while the aircraft may have been heading for Iran, the weapons could actually have been earmarked for radical Middle Eastern groups like Hamas and Hezbollah which Iran has bankrolled and supplied with weapons in the past.
The five-man crew — four from Kazakhstan and one from Belarus — claimed they were ignorant of what they were carrying. The crew was deported in February after prosecutors dropped all charges against them.
Thai authorities say the weapons on board included explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and components for surface-to-air missiles.
The U.N. imposed sanctions banning North Korea from exporting any arms after the communist regime conducted a nuclear test and test-fired missiles. Impoverished North Korea is believed to earn hundreds of millions of dollars every year by selling missiles, missile parts and other weapons to countries such as Iran, Syria and Myanmar.
Lieberman, who heads an ultranationalist party that is a junior partner in Israel's coaltion government, also claimed that "missile programs" in Iran and Syria were receiving crucial assistance from the North Korean side. He gave no evidence.
Israel has long accused Syria of aiding the Jewish state's bitterest enemies. Syria harbors the exiled leadership of Hamas and other anti-Israel Palestinian groups. Israel also says Syria funnels Iranian arms to Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group that battled Israel to a stalemate in a one-month war in 2006.
Lieberman, who met with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama during his visit, also said that the Israeli government is ready to start direct peace talks without preconditions with the Palestinians.
The two sides completed the first round of U.S.-brokered, indirect peace talks over the weekend, resuming negotiations after a 17-month hiatus.
