Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah promised thousands of supporters that they would eventually bring down Lebanon's Western-backed government, but the prime minister vowed to stand firm against protesters.
Street demonstrations that started a week ago by Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian parties are aimed at pressuring Prime Minister Fuad Saniora to quit in a deepening political crisis threatening to tear the country apart.
The crisis also has taken dangerous sectarian overtones, with Sunni Muslims largely supporting the Sunni prime minister against the Shiite Hezbollah. Christians were split between the two camps.
In a rousing speech delivered on Thursday night on huge screens in two central Beirut squares, Nasrallah rejected strife between Shiites and Sunnis and called on supporters to turn out for a mass downtown noon prayer led by a prominent Sunni scholar yesterday to show Muslim "unity and cohesion in the face of sedition," stressing "there won't be fighting between Shiites and Sunnis."
Nasrallah also accused Saniora of conniving with Israel during its month-long war with Hezbollah last summer. He claimed Saniora ordered the Lebanese army to confiscate Hezbollah's supplies of weapons -- his sharpest attack on the prime minister since the August cease-fire that ended the fighting.
Emboldened by international support for his US-backed government, Saniora insisted he would not give in to protesters. He spoke to hundreds of supporters outside his offices, where he has been hold up, ringed by troops, riot police and barbed wire.
"We are standing fast, believing in the justness of our position," Saniora said.
Nasrallah's speech appeared to be an attempt to rouse supporters for a massive demonstration planned in Beirut tomorrow.
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