'Lebanon turmoil unlikely to descend into clash'

             Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday rejected the possibility of a civil war in Lebanon erupting as a result of the government collapsing, Al-Jazeera reported. "There will never be a war between the Sunnis and Shi'ites. We will calculate our steps," he said, according to the report. Asked by The Jerusalem Post whether civil war in Lebanon was imminent, Mizrahi said, “Like always in Lebanon, I believe there will be a deal between the Saudis and the Syrians,” referring to two of the main state sponsors of the rival Lebanese factions – the Hizbullah-led March 8 coalition and the pro-Western March 14 alliance, led by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Mizrahi predicted that Hizbullah would in effect extort its rivals in Lebanon and outside of it, by refraining from violence in exchange for an improvement in its political and strategic position in the country. “At the end, there will be some kind of solution that will bring some kind of peace in Lebanon. But it will not fundamentally change the strategic situation, in which Lebanon will be on the brink of civil war, because... in my point of view... Hizbullah’s interest is to really be the dominating [side] in Lebanon,” Mizrahi said. “Hizbullah will get something at the end,” he added. “All parties will do their best to avoid civil war, and I think they will succeed in avoiding it by paying a certain price to Hizbullah. “Which price, I don’t know, but it will not change the fundamental [situation of being on the] brink of another showdown in three, four or six months,” Mizrahi said. “More and more, Hizbullah is the owner and real ruler of Lebanon. As one journalist said, this is an organization which has a state,” Mizrahi added. Although Hizbullah continues to add to its rocket stockpiles and military power, Israel’s deterrence remains in effect, Mizrahi said. “Since the 2006 war... until today, there have been five years of complete silence on the border in the North. We never had it in the past... Five years that Hassan Nasrallah is still making declarations from a bunker,” Mizrahi said. “At the present time, all parties have an interest in not starting a war,” he said. But that could easily change, Mizrahi warned. Flareups could erupt if “Hizbullah makes a calculation that a provocation in the North will serve its interests in Lebanon... or in case Iran miscalculates that it will serve its interest for Hizbullah to start a war.” Asked by the Post what he made of recent Iranian reports that a Mossad ring tasked with assassinating two nuclear scientists last year had been apprehended, Mizrahi said, “It might be true. So what? Or it might not be true.” Mizrahi said that “the Iranians several times declared Israeli or American rings of spies, but never put evidence on the table... We don’t know if it really happened, and if it did, so they caught one spy. So what? But I cannot rule out a situation in which it is not true, [and in which it is used as an] issue to divert attention, to say we have a common enemy and we have to fight it and not [have] conflict within ourselves.”Turkey's foreign minister said that Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri is traveling to Turkey for talks following the collapse of his government. Ahmet Davutoglu said that "Hariri will come to our country later tonight and I will meet with him." The Lebanese government collapsed on Wednesday after Hizbullah and its allies pulled out over differences stemming from the UN investigation into the assassination of Hariri's father, former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Earlier on Thursday, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman began consultations over the choice of a new prime minister for the country. He met with parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who told reporters after the meeting that the president would begin polling lawmakers on their choice on Monday. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that his party will "calculate our steps" after withdrawing from the Lebanese government, at a meeting of party leaders on earlier on Thursday, Al-Jazeera reported. Nasrallah explained that his party left the government because the "expected result of the international tribunal for the former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri is aimed at the resistance." Suleiman asked Hariri, as well as other members of his party, to remain in their positions in a transitional government, Lebanese news sources reported on Thursday. Hizbullah told Suleiman that it will not allow Hariri to continue as prime minister, according to a Thursday report by Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar. "He is not fit to have this responsibility, as experience has proven," a Hizbullah source told Al-Akhbar. Another Hizbullah source told Lebanese daily A-Safir that Hariri will not be prime minister anymore "because he is part of the problem, not the solution." (19,00)