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Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah dismissed yesterday a UN call for his militant anti-Israel movement to disarm, saying it was determined to maintain a military capacity to defend Lebanon.
“I affirm today, firmly, decisively and with the greatest conviction ... the choice of armed resistance,” Nasrallah said. “These weapons, along with the Lebanese people and army, are the only guarantee of Lebanon’s protection.”
Mocking a demand by visiting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that Hezbollah lay down its weapons, Nasrallah said he was happy that Hezbollah’s military prowess was a cause for concern.
“Your concern, Secretary General, reassures us and pleases us. What matters to us is that you are worried, and that America ... and Israel are worried with you,” he said in a televised speech marking a Shia holy day.
“There are some who only want dialogue in order to disarm Hezbollah,” he said. “They will never achieve this goal, this delusion.”
Hezbollah, which fought a devastating month-long war with Israel in 2006, has rejected a UN Security Council resolution that demands that it lay down its military arsenal, as all other Lebanese armed groups did at the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
Nasrallah, in hiding since 2006 for fear of assassination, says his movement has been re-arming since the 2006 conflict, when it fired hundreds of rockets across the border daily into northern Israel.
Addressing the uprising in neighbouring Syria, the Shia leader, a longtime ally of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, urged the opposition to heed calls for dialogue.
“We call on the Syrian opposition, both inside Syria and abroad, to respond to Assad’s calls for dialogue and co-operate to implement reform,” Nasrallah said.
“We also call for calm and stability to be restored, for arms to be laid down, for things to be resolved through dialogue.”
The Iranian-backed militant group has expressed its support for Assad since the outbreak of the 10-month revolt in Syria that has left more the 5,000 dead according to the UN.
Ban, speaking in Beirut on Friday, said he was “deeply concerned about the military capacity of Hezbollah” and the lack of progress in disarmament. “All these arms outside of the authorised state authority, it’s not acceptable,” he declared.
Yesterday, as Nasrallah addressed a Hezbollah rally in the town of Baalbek by video link, Ban visited the headquarters of UN peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, close to the border with Israel and a stronghold of Hezbollah.
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) was expanded after the 2006 war and now has around 12,000 peacekeepers.
It has come under attack three times in the last year in bombings which wounded Italian and French soldiers. No group claimed responsibility for the attacks.
“In my meetings with government officials I called on them to increase protection for you,” Ban told Unifil members, adding that the 293 fatalities since the force was set up in 1978 were the highest death toll suffered by a UN peacekeeping force.
“This weighs heavily on my heart,” he said.
The Lebanese army has taken on a bigger role in the south since 2006, but given the tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, there is no sign of an exit strategy for the UN force there.
Ban, who was in Lebanon for a three-day visit, was due to address a conference in Beirut today on “reforms and transitions to democracy”.