BEIRUT, Lebanon  -- Hezbollah Secretary General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah said Monday that an Israeli being held by his guerrillas was a spy who was captured after being lured into Lebanon.

The Israelis said the captive, who served in the army reserves, was an ordinary businessman and was kidnapped.

Nasrallah said the man was a colonel who was working with one of the Israeli security agencies. He said the man had approached a person abroad close to the Hezbollah leadership and tried to recruit him for Israeli intelligence. That person informed his contacts in Hezbollah and cooperated with them to lure the Israeli to Beirut.

Nasrallah said the man flew into Beirut from Brussels, Belgium, on a non-Israeli passport that later proved to be forged.

The Israeli ``was trying to penetrate the (Islamic) resistance and to carry out a spy mission against Hezbollah,'' Nasrallah said in Beirut. ``It is the resistance's legitimate and legal right to detain him and take him prisoner.''

``This is not a kidnapping. He came to Lebanon, was detained and taken prisoner,'' Nasrallah said.

Nasrallah said the group captured the Israeli to trade him and three Israeli soldiers it ambushed earlier this month for prisoners held by Israel.

Israeli Cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer dismissed Nasrallah's claim as a ``fantastical story,'' saying ``there is no connection between reality and the figment of imagination described here.''

``This is a private businessman whose trip was made in part for personal reasons, and there is no reason to go into those details,'' Ben-Eliezer told Israel's Channel 2.

Israeli security officials have said the kidnapping took place in Switzerland. But Swiss federal police spokesman Rolf Debrunner has said he could not confirm the report.

The Israeli media said an Israeli man named Elhanan Tannenbaum was recently abducted in Europe. Television networks quoted unidentified officials as saying he was a 56-year-old businessman taken while working on a deal in Europe and flown to Lebanon.

On Sunday, Nasrallah appeared on television across the Arab world announcing the capture. His words, at a conference of Arab and Islamic leaders who are staunch opponents of Israel and of a peaceful settlement of the Mideast conflict, drew applause from the audience of nearly 200 people.

Prime Minister Salim Hoss, who was sitting next to Nasrallah, joined in the applause several seconds after it began. Hoss said Monday that ``Israel is required to free our prisoners. This is the solution.''

At the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak called on the United Nations ``to take necessary action to bring back'' the captive, according to a statement he issued following a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Three Israeli soldiers were captured Oct. 7 during a gunbattle with Hezbollah guerrillas on the Lebanese-Israeli border. The group said it wanted to swap them for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Arab prisoners held in Israel. The United Nations has attempted to mediate, so far without success.

Salma Taas reporting with agencies.  - Posted 18, October 2000