UNITED NATIONS, March 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Playing solo, the spiritual leader of Lebanon's Maronite Catholics said on Friday, March 18, that the resistance movement Hizbullah should disarm.

“[Hizbullah is] a Lebanese party that was behind the liberation of southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation,” Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir said after talks with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, reported Reuters.

“But now that this has been accomplished, there is no reason for Hizbullah to still have arms,” he argued.

UN Security Council resolution 1559, drafted by France and the US, calls for the withdrawal of all “foreign” troops from Lebanon and the disarmament of Lebanese militias, a reference to Hizbullah.

Lebanon was thrown into political turmoil following the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri late last month.

The opposition led thousands of people to the streets demanding immediate Syrian withdrawal, an international probe into the killing of Hariri and the sacking of heads of all security agencies.

However, almost none of the opposition figures, including heavyweight Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Sfeir, for that matter, has raised the issue of disarming Hizbullah.

Hizbullah, which has 13 seats in the Lebanese parliament, was probably the only pro-Syria power courted by the opposition camp, which went as far as demanding the resignation of President Emile Lahoud.

Following talks with Annan, Sfeir said “Hizbullah could become a political party, and it already has a few deputies in the Lebanese parliament.

“It could continue to provide the humanitarian aid that it now offers to the benefit of this population.”

Sfeir added that the issue of the contested Shebaa Farms area should be settled by talks among Lebanon, Syria and Israel, with UN help.

Syria and Lebanon say the Shebaa Farms area, still occupied by Israel, is a part of Lebanon, but a UN-drawn border puts the area in Israeli-occupied Syrian territories.

Only a day earlier, Sfeir said the issue of Hizbullah “was never raised” during his meeting with US President George W. Bush at the White House.

He said Bush assured him “he would follow the Lebanese situation very, very closely to make sure that Lebanon regains its independence and freedom.”

In a 380-3 resolution, the US House of Representatives called on the European Union to put the Lebanese resistance group on its list of terrorist organizations and block its funding.

The US already considers Hizbullah a “foreign terrorist organization.”

However, several EU countries, including France, Spain and Britain, have been reluctant to toy the American line.

Hizbullah reacted with mixed anger and surprise to Sfeir’s statements.

“It came as a total surprise,” Hizbullah deputy in the parliament Nazih Mansour told Aljazeera satellite channel.

“Patriarch Sfeir asserted that he didn’t tackle the disbarment of Hizbullah with Bush, and now he says that the group should disarm,” said the lawmaker, adding the group would seek an explanation from Sfeir after his return.

“We will not allow a return to the pre-Taif conditions,” he said, referring to the 1989 agreement that ended the bloody 15-year-old civil war in Lebanon.

Hizbullah does enjoy soaring popularity among the Lebanese of all walks of life.

Thanks to resistance operations carried out by Hizbullah fighters, Israeli occupation troops were forced on May 24, 2000 to withdraw from a large territory in southern Lebanon, occupied by Israel in 1978.