troung

Nasrallah gov't protest worries Israel
By YAAKOV KATZ


Israeli defense officials expressed extreme concern Thursday with Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's call for a massive protest to bring down the Lebanese government, warning that UNIFIL might be disbanded and expelled from Lebanon if Prime Minister Fuad Saniora left office.

On Thursday, Hizbullah and allied opposition groups called for mass protests to begin Friday in downtown Beirut with the aim of bringing down Saniora's government, which is backed by the United States.

If Saniora's weak government were to fall, the Israeli defense officials warned, UNIFIL could be forced out of southern Lebanon, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) could also be ordered to remove their units and positions from southern Lebanon, Hizbullah's breeding ground.

While Hizbullah has continued to build up militarily since the end of the war and since a UN-brokered cease-fire went into effect, the guerrillas have refrained from displaying their weapons in public along the border with Israel.

"UNIFIL is not the best, but it has been effective so far in preventing Hizbullah from returning to the border," a high-ranking defense official told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. "If UNIFIL is kicked out of Lebanon we can easily find ourselves back in the same situation we were in before the war this past summer, or even back at war."

The call for peaceful street action was made in a joint opposition statement read Thursday on Hizbullah's Al Manar television station. It said the street action would begin at 3 p.m. Friday in downtown Beirut, where the embattled government has its offices.

"I call upon you all for a popular action to put pressure to achieve this goal," Nasrallah said. He stressed the demonstrations should be "peaceful and civilized," as their aim would be to "push things in a peaceful, civil and political manner toward this choice."

The government, he said, "has proven it is incompetent and has failed to fulfill its promises and achieve anything significant." Soon after he spoke, celebratory gunfire and firecrackers were heard in Hizbullah-controlled areas of Beirut.

Saniora and members of his Cabinet have been bracing for mass demonstrations for days. The security forces have deployed troops, barbed wire and armored vehicles outside the main government office complex, where the prime minister and some ministers have been sleeping in a guest house.

Nasrallah, who is backed by Syria and Iran, accused Saniora's anti-Syrian government of representing only a certain portion of multi-sectarian Lebanon.

"Lebanon with its (sectarian) makeup cannot be administered by one side amid difficult internal conditions," Nasrallah said, adding that the answer was to form a broader-based Cabinet.

"Let us call for a national unity government," he said, repeating a phrase that has become identified with his call for Hizbullah and its allies to gain a veto-wielding share of the Cabinet.

"We are not talking about eliminating others," he said of the pro-government factions.
AP contributed to this report.

__________________
To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway