Hezbollah chief says will not surrender under threat from Israel

Beirut: Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said Sunday his group would not surrender or lay down its weapons in response to Israeli threats, despite pressure on the Lebanese militants to disarm.

"This threat will not make us accept surrender," Qassem said in a televised speech to thousands of his supporters in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, during the religious commemoration of Ashura.

Lebanese leaders who took office in the aftermath of a war between Israel and Hezbollah last year have repeatedly vowed a state monopoly on bearing arms while demanding Israel comply with a November ceasefire that ended the fighting.

Qassem, who succeeded longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah after Israel killed him in September, said the group's fighters would not abandon their arms and asserted that Israel's "aggression" must first stop.

His speech came as US envoy Tom Barrack was expected in Beirut on Monday.

Lebanese authorities are due to deliver a response to Barrack's request for Iran-backed Hezbollah to be disarmed by the end of the year, according to a Lebanese official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Lebanese authorities say they have been dismantling Hezbollah's military infrastructure in the south, near the Israeli border.

Israel has continued to strike Lebanon despite the November ceasefire, claiming to hit Hezbollah targets and accusing Beirut of not doing enough to disarm the group.

According to the ceasefire agreement, Hezbollah is to pull its fighters back north of the Litani river, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Israeli frontier.

Israel was to withdraw its troops from all of Lebanon, but has kept them deployed in five points it deemed strategic.

Qassem said Israel must abide by the ceasefire agreement, "withdraw from the occupied territories, stop its aggression... release the prisoners" detained during last year's war, and that reconstruction in Lebanon must begin.

Only then, according to the Hezbollah chief, "will we be ready for the second stage, which is to discuss national security and defence strategy".

Supporters dressed in black for Ashura marched through Beirut's southern suburbs before his speech, waving Hezbollah banners as well as national Lebanese, Palestinian and Iranian flags.

Some also carried posters of the slain leader Nasrallah.

In his remarks, Qassem said that his movement "will not accept normalisation... with the Israeli enemy", after Israel's top diplomat said his government was "interested" in such a move.

Lebanon, which is technically still at war with Israel, did not comment.

Syria, which was also mentioned by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, said it was "premature" to discuss normalisation.