BEIRUT - The head of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah said Saturday that Israel was the beneficiary of an overnight bomb blast here, as he urged a fresh attempt at dialogue to resolve Lebanon's political crisis.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah also reiterated his rejection of calls for Hezbollah to disarm, saying the movement's status was a strictly domestic matter.
"It is a very dangerous incident," Nasrallah said of an explosion early Saturday in a Christian residential area that wounded 11 people and caused extensive damage.
"Someone wants to increase tension and instability," he said, adding that "Israel is the beneficiary." But he stressed that he was not levelling any "premature accusations."
Addressing reporters Nasrallah also appealed to the anti-Syrian "opposition to sit down at a table to talk and to find a way out of the political crisis."
Prime Minister-designate Omar Karameh, a Syrian loyalist, has so far been unable to persuade the opposition to join him in a national unity cabinet. Political friction surged here following the assassination February 14 of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
Nasrallah responded Saturday to a call for Hezbollah to disarm issued in Washington by Nasrallah Sfeir, patriarch of the Lebanese Maronite church.
"I would have wished that the matter had not been dealt with in this way," Nasrallah said.
"Two representatives of the patriarch visited me before his (Sfeir's) departure and I told them that to take firm positions on this question would not be opportune.
"The matter of the (anti-Israeli) resistance is an internal Lebanese affair. Neither the United States, nor the UN Security Council nor anyone else has the right to raise this question."
The United States has lately stepped up demands for Hezbollah's disarmament, a position echoed by Sfeir.
He noted that Hezbollah was a "Lebanese group that struggled for the liberation of southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation. But now that has been accomplished and there is no longer a reason for Hezbollah to hold onto its arms."
03/19/2005 15:07 GMT