(Xinhua) -- Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said he advocated a settlement of the Lebanon crisis, the local Naharnet news website reported on Saturday. "We are now in a better situation than at any time before," he said, thanking "brotherly Arab and Islamic nations" for their mediatory efforts to resolve the Lebanese crisis. "We have been calling for a settlement from the beginning of the crisis," Nasrallah told a rally in southern Beirut on Friday evening. "In fact, that was why we manufactured the crisis, so we could get the settlement we wanted..."
Nasrallah also welcomed talks that began Thursday evening between Lebanon's two key opponents - Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri -- in an effort to end the three-month-old deadlock. "We support the dialogue and hope it will reach the desired results," he said, adding that both domestic and international opinion favored a settlement.
Nasrallah, however, vowed to continue Hezbollah's campaign against Lebanese Premier Fouad Seniora's government until it granted the opposition a veto-wielding share of the cabinet. "The opposition will continue its open-ended sit-ins, its political and media campaign, and it will resort to other options if this opportunity fails," Nasrallah said.
Lebanese opposition alliance launched an open-ended sit-in in downtown Beirut on Dec. 1 last year to topple Seniora's government, declaring the anti-Syrian cabinet illegitimate and demanding early parliamentary elections and a new electoral law. The Seniora government, backed by the March 14 parliamentary majority coalition, had rejected such calls and accused the Hezbollah-led protest of trying to obstruct the creation of an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri and related crimes.