by Pierre Balanian

Beirut (AsiaNews) - Hassann Nassrallah, Hezbollah's secretary general in Lebanon, said the instigators of the attacks on Iraqi civilians and homes of the Marjaiya officials (highest Shiite religious authorities) were "collaborationist agents and traitors". 

Nassrallah's address, delivered in front of a packed audience, was aired live on the Al-Manar television network on the day of the "Iraqi People's Support Festival", organized by the Hezbollah organization in Beirut.

Nassrallah exhorted US troops to pull out of the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Otherwise, he said, there will be a "Shiite Intifada (launched) larger than one in Palestine."

Nassrallah accused the United States of "desecrating Shiite holy sites" and threatened "Jihad (holy war) and martyrdom to protect the sacred region".  

The Hezbollah head then said that "like Ariel Sharon's going to see (the destroying of Mosques) that sparked the Al-Aqsa Intifada, the violation of our holy sites in Najaf and Karbala justifies a Intifada whose limits and consequences only God the Almighty knows."

Nassrallah had plenty of harsh comments to make about Washington, "whose real objectives," he said, "have been unmasked by everyone just like Iraqi transitional government has been."  The Hezbollah leader said he considers the Iraqi PGC as merely "an instrument of American power".

Nassrallah welcomed all Shiite Lebanese to turn up this Friday for a mass protest while wearing his kefna (a white scarf worn across one shoulders as symbol of one's readiness for martyrdom). In fact, Nassrallah himself said he wore the scarf "to show (his) willingness to be martyred to defend Shiite holy places in Iraq."    

The Iranian government has often compared the Shiite Imam Moqtada Al-Sadr to Hassan Nassrallah, both being young men. Tehran believes that Al-Sadr "will force the United States to withdraw from Iraq just like Nassrallah forced Israel to pull out of Lebanon."

There is much talk among Iraqi Shiite circles about the great admiration Al-Sadr has for Nassrallah. In southern Lebanon there is an important branch of Al-Sadr family clans (with whom Moqtada has close ties) in the very same region in which Nassrallah operates. Evidence of this was the case of Shiite Lebanese Imam Mussa Al-Sadr, who disappeared in Libya under mysterious circumstances at the end of the 1980s.

• lebanon
• nassrallah
• shiites
• najaf
• intifada