BEIRUT, Sept 24 (AFP) - Lebanese militant group Hezbollah described as "shameful" Friday a handshake between Iraq's US-backed prime minister and the Israeli foreign minister at the United Nations in New York.
"The behaviour of the Iraqi interim prime minister is shameful and a flagrant sign of one of the main reasons behind the American-led war against Iraq, that is, get Iraq out of the Arab and Islamic worlds and put it under the influence of American-Zionist policy," the Shiite militia said.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom had a brief exchange at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, where the Iraqi and Israeli delegations had been placed next to each other, in alphabetical order.
"We refuse this handshake which is a complete humiliation for Iraq's people, its history, its culture and its Islamic and national engagement, and which, at the same time, makes little of the suffering of the Palestinian people and the feelings of Arabs and Muslims around the world," the Hezbollah statement said.
Shalom said in June that his country would like diplomatic relations with Iraq, but that it was up to Iraq to decide if and when that would happen.
The foreign minister has also raised the possibility of a peace treaty being signed between the two countries, which have remained at a state of war ever since the Jewish state's establishment in 1948.