Lebanese leader fears Hezbollah bracing for war
DUBAI (AFP) — A leader of Lebanon's ruling majority said on Thursday he feared Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was preparing for a new war with Israel similar to the devastating 2006 conflict.
"You were successful in mobilising (supporters) for Ashura, and this is normal. But what are you preparing?" Walid Jumblatt said of Nasrallah during an interview with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite news channel.
"Are you preparing a new war? When you speak of body parts, is a new war coming?" said Jumblatt, who is Lebanon's Druze leader and an MP, referring to inflammatory remarks by the Shiite militant leader.
"We have the heads, the hands, the feet and even a nearly intact cadaver from the head down to the pelvis," Nasrallah told tens of thousands of supporters Saturday in his first public appearance in more than a year to commemorate Ashura, Shiite Islam's holiest day.
Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in July 2006 led to the 34-day war that killed more than 1,200 civilians in Lebanon as well as 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
"The fear is that ... there are preparations for a new war, possibly similar to the 2006 war, through some preemptive (action)," Jumblatt said.
Nasrallah, whose Iranian- and Syrian-backed group leads the opposition in Lebanon, made his remarks amid hightened tension in the country which has been without a president for two months because of a long-running crisis between the Western-backed majority and the opposition.
Jumblatt told Al-Arabiya he did not rule out the possibility that Syria, whom he blamed for a string of political assassinations in Lebanon, will engineer the abduction and killing of foreigners, a practice that was widespread during the 1975-1990 civil war.
"With the Syrian, and possibly Iranian, terrorism ... we might go back to this diabolical cycle," Jumblatt said.
