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<a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7EC98E77-1FBA-4130-A0D2-0599A5B7991E.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7EC98E77-1FBA-4130-A0D2-0599A5B7991E.htm<br>
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</a></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><b>Nasrallah: No regrets
seizing Israelis<br><br>
</b><i>Tuesday 05 September 2006 1:41 PM GMT</i></font> <br><br>
<b>Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has said he does
"not regret" the capture of two Israeli soldiers that led to
Israel's offensive against Lebanon.<br><br>
</b><font size=2>"The capture was exploited [by the Israelis] for
the timing of the war ... but we think it hastened a war that was going
to happen anyway and this was to our advantage and the advantage of
Lebanon," Nasrallah said in an interview with the Lebanese daily
newspaper As-Safir, published on Tuesday.<br><br>
"I say we did not make a mistake in judgment. Our calculations were
correct and we do not regret it."<br><br>
Hezbollah fighters killed three Israeli soldiers and seized two more in a
cross-border raid on July 12, sparking 34 days of fighting that ended on
August 14 and left swaths of south Beirut and south Lebanon in
ruins.<br><br>
At least 855 Lebanese and 159 Israelis were killed and Lebanese officials
say the country will need about $3.5 billion to repair buildings, bridges
and other destroyed infrastructure.<br><br>
<b>"Strategic victory"<br><br>
</b>In an August 27 televised interview, Nasrallah had said he would not
have ordered the capture of the two Israeli soldiers if he had known it
would lead to such a war.<br><br>
But in the As-Safir interview, Nasrallah said his group fought a war that
brought "strategic and historic victory" for Lebanon.<br><br>
Nasrallah contended that Israel was unable to achieve any of its declared
goals, including destroying Hezbollah's rocket launchers and
infrastructure, pushing its fighters away from south Lebanon and freeing
the two captured soldiers.<br><br>
He mocked Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, saying: "His only
achievement was putting me in a shelter."<br><br>
Nasrallah went into hiding on the first day of the war and has not been
seen in public since.<br><br>
</font><font size=3>Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, rebuked
Nasrallah on Tuesday, saying the Hezbollah leader could not be claiming
victory while still in hiding.<br><br>
"Someone who doesn't come out of his bunker is not a person who
thinks that he's won," Olmert said.<br><br>
The war has been widely seen in Israel as a failure, in part because the
military didn't crush Hezbollah and was unable to stop Hezbollah rocket
barrages on northern Israel during the fighting. <br><br>
However, Olmert reiterated on Tuesday that Israel had achieved what it
set out to do - force the Lebanese army to deploy along the
Israel-Lebanon border.<br><br>
<b>AP<br><br>
</b>You can find this article at:<br>
<a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7EC98E77-1FBA-4130-A0D2-0599A5B7991E.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7EC98E77-1FBA-4130-A0D2-0599A5B7991E.htm</a>
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