Lebanese caretaker PM slams Hezbollah's arsenal

BEIRUT. March 12. KAZINFORM Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri said Friday that his March 14 Alliance was gearing up for a large-scale rally on March 13 to call for the disarmament of his rival Shiite armed group Hezbollah; Kazinform refers Xinhua.

Speaking to supporters at his residence, Hariri said the Lebanese state ought to have monopoly over arms, adding that the Lebanese Army should be the sole authority defending Lebanon.

"There should be no weapons but those of the Lebanese state, and decisions of war and peace ought to be made by the Lebanese state," he said, "No one will defend Lebanon but the Lebanese Army, under the command and the will of the state."

Although the country's militia and political parties were disarmed after the end of Lebanon's 1975-1990 Civil War, Hezbollah kept the weapons it used in fighting Israel's occupation in south Lebanon. But Hariri and his allies in the Western-backed March 14 Alliance argue that Hezbollah ought to be disarmed after Israel ended its occupation in most of south Lebanon in 2000.

Hariri accused Hezbollah of executing a foreign agenda. "Their decision, the decision of their weapons, is not in their hands, but in the hands of the external forces that provide them with arms, finance them and press on them to make the weapons dominate our lives and to control our country, its resources and its future, " he said, in reference to Hezbollah's allies Syria and Iran.

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