Hezbollah chief says will not surrender under threat from Israel

BEIRUT

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said on July 6 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 Shiite Muslim 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 U.S. envoy Tom Barrack was expected in Beirut on July 7.

Lebanese authorities are due to deliver a response to Barrack's request for Hezbollah to be disarmed by the end of the year.