The leader of Shiite movement Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah, called on the parliamentary leader of the coalition bloc that leads the Lebanese government to meet him for reconcilation talks, in comments published on Monday. According to AFP, Nasrallah said no objection in principle had been raised to the idea of a meeting to bury the hatchet after the deadly clashes between Saad Hariri's supporters and the Hizbullah-led opposition that preceded a national reconcilation agreement reached in Qatar in May.

"I have said that I am ready to sit down with him -- there's no disagreement about the principle of a meeting, only about the venue," Nasrallah said in the comments carried by Lebanese newspapers.

Nasrallah said that reconciliation between Hariri's Sunni-led bloc and the Shiite-led opposition was in the interests of Hizbullah in its resistance to Israel. "We believe that national unity is one of the major factors that strengthens the resistance and, by contrast, that internal disagreements and conflicts are a major cause of weakness," he said. "We are ready to turn the page on the past and heal all of the scars. We are ready for any dialogue as it holds no fears for us."

Nasrallah said he fully supported Hariri's efforts to calm sectarian tensions in Lebanon's second city of Tripoli. "We back all efforts to put the tensions in Tripoli behind us," he said. "The important thing is not who sponsors reconciliation... it is to halt the bloodshed."

Hariri has been in Tripoli since Saturday trying to reconcile the city's feuding Sunni and Alawi communities.

© 2008 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)