Hussein Assi

12/09/2008 Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Kassem said Thursday that the party's ultimate goal was to build a strong Lebanon, noting that a weak Lebanon without Resistance would be at the service of Israel, the US tutelage and the international intelligence.

"We want the strong Lebanon, the one that teaches lessons to the whole world, the one that is proud that its resistance has liberated it from Israeli occupation, the one that tells the whole world that the Lebanese youth are the greatest and noblest young men who battled and confronted the enemy," Sheikh Kassem said.

Speaking on Thursday during an Iftar (fast breaking), Sheikh Kassem highlighted three rules he said were necessary for national dialogue to succeed. According to his eminence, those three rules are "to agree that Israel is the ultimate enemy, to believe in building the able and fair state, and to aim at ensuring the resistance and defense fundamentals."

"We should be all convinced in building the capable, fair, balanced, strong, clean state that would put limits to all forms of corruption, work to make all citizens equal and look to socio-economic building," Sheikh Kassem highlighted.

His eminence stressed that the Resistance was never an obstacle to the state's work, recalling that freed Lebanon started construction work after expelling the occupant in 2000. "The problem in the state's weakness comes from the state guardians, not from the Resistance," Sheikh Kassem said, noting that the Resistance and the opposition fulfilled all their pledges, which not the case with others.

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