Beirut: Al-Qaeda has purportedly issued a statement threatening to topple Lebanon's "corrupt" Western-backed government, according to a London-based Arabic newspaper.
The Al-Hayat newspaper reported that al-Qaeda issued the statement from the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared in northern Lebanon.
"The organisation has arrived in Lebanon and we will work on destroying this corrupt government that receives orders from the American administration," Al-Hayat said, quoting the statement.
Although it was impossible to verify the authenticity of the message, Information Minister Ghazi Aridi cast doubt on its veracity on Monday.
"There is nothing that proves that this statement was issued by al-Qaeda,'' he told reporters on Monday following a cabinet meeting in which the government approved a UN draft setting up an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Aridi suggested the statement could be the work of local or regional groups that were opposed to the international tribunal in an attempt to intimidate the ministers ahead of the vote on Monday.
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