BEIRUT, Nov 11: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday no power could disarm his group and that it was ready for a new conflict with Israel after last year’s war.

“No one in the world can disarm Hezbollah,” Nasrallah said in a speech broadcast on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television.

“The entire world is not capable of implementing the clause concerning the disarmament of the resistance in (UN Security Council) Resolution 1559,” he said.

The 2004 resolution called for the dismantling and disarmament of all foreign or local militias operating in Lebanon, including Hezbollah which says it is a legitimate resistance group against Israel.

“The resistance in Lebanon has determination, will, manpower and sufficient weapons” to face Israel in a new conflict, Nasrallah said.

“The resistance is ready, day and night, to defend south Lebanon (a bastion of Hezbollah) as well as all of Lebanon... to achieve a historic victory that will change the face of the region.” Israel’s war with Hezbollah, which followed Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 civilians in Lebanon, a third of them children, as well as 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

It also caused massive destruction across the south of Lebanon before ending with a UN-brokered ceasefire on Aug 14.

Nasrallah warned of a political vacuum in Lebanon, amid a deadlock to find a successor to pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud whose mandate expires on Nov 24.

“I urge Lahoud to... adopt an initiative to prevent the country from falling into a vacuum if there is no agreement” on a new president, he said.

Lebanon’s pro-opposition parliament speaker Nabih Berri on Saturday postponed, for a third time, a special session to elect a successor to Lahoud amid the failure of political rivals to agree on a consensus candidate.

The anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, with 68 MPs in the 127-seat house, has threatened to go ahead on its own with a presidential vote if no consensus candidate is found.

Nasrallah warned that the opposition would not recognise a president unless he is elected by two-thirds of MPs.

“Any president elected by a simple majority... will not be recognised by te opposition, which would consider him to be an impostor,” said the Hezbollah leader.

Fears are running high that the dispute could lead to two rival governments being appointed and a return to the final years of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war when two competing administrations battled for control.—AFP