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By BASSEM MROUE
The Associated Press
Monday, November 30, 2009; 1:41 PM BEIRUT -- Hezbollah's leader said Monday that the Lebanese militant
group will improve its weapons capabilities to face off any Israeli
threat and that armed struggle was the only way to regain Arab lands
captured by the Jewish state.
Hassan Nasrallah's remarks signaled the group has no intention of
meeting a United Nations resolution requiring it to give up its weapons.
That position that has generated division among the country's fractious
political groups as well as concern in Israel, which says it is
preparing to deploy a defense system to shoot down rockets from Lebanon. Nasrallah gave no details on the weapons plans, but Hezbollah has said
it has tens of thousands of rockets. Israel's military says that since its 2006 war with the group, Hezbollah
has tripled its prewar arsenal to more than 40,000 rockets, some of
which can strike virtually anywhere in Israel - a dramatic improvement
over the short-range missiles fired in 2006. Nasrallah said the buildup was necessary. "The continuation of Israeli threats against Lebanon ... force the
resistance to seek more power in order to improve its capabilities,"
Nasrallah told reporters via video link from a secret location. He has
rarely appeared in public since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, fearing
Israeli assassination. His comments came during a news conference to announce the group's new
political manifesto, the second since Hezbollah was founded in 1982 to
fight Israel's invading military. While the group remains determinedly anti-Israel, its manifesto showed
some signs of moderation on the Lebanese political scene, where
Hezbollah holds sway with two members in the Cabinet and 11 or
parliament's 128 seats. The Shiite Muslim group's first manifesto in 1985 called for
establishing an Islamic state in Lebanon, but the new manifesto did not
mention an Islamic state and underscored the importance of coexistence
among Lebanon's 18 religious sects. The U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 war calls on the group to
disarm, but Hezbollah says it must keep its weapons to fight off any
Israeli threat in the future. Israel's defense industry said last week it is close to deploying a
system known as the Iron Dome that will use cameras and radar to track
incoming rockets and shoot them down within seconds of their launch.
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