BEGIN AGAIN:

TV star Nasrallah impresses people on all sides in hopeful Lebanon (Patrick Bishop, 29/08/2006, Daily Telegraph)

[D]espite Nasrallah's standing, it is clear that few Lebanese even among his own Shia supporters have the stomach for a resumption of war and want him to turn his energies to rebuilding the country.

The interview was the first he has given since the war ended and was clearly designed to calm fears that there would be any second round of fighting. It contained a frank admission that, had he known the destruction that would result from the capture of two Israeli soldiers, he would never have allowed the operation to go ahead.

He also said that the strengthened deployment of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), which starts this week, had nothing to fear from his men, "as long as their mission is not to disarm the resistance".

He added that, if the Lebanese Army, which is moving to take control of the south of the country for the first time in decades, came across an armed man, "they have the right to disarm him". Nasrallah also went out of this way to emphasise that the political capital Hizbollah had won with its "victory" against Israel would not be used to impose a Shia hegemony on the country's religious and sectarian patchwork.

Nasrallah chose to give the interview to the liberal, secular New TV station, rather than to his propaganda outlet, al Manar, and the questioner was a woman journalist, Maryam al Bassam.

It was watched by almost everyone in Lebanon and dominated coffee shop conversation yesterday. In Nasrallah's home village of Bazouriyeh, near Tyre, Shia residents were proud of the impression he had made.