Druze leader MP Walid Jumblatt, a key figure in Lebanon's ruling anti-Syrian majority, on Sunday launched a verbal assault on the opposition, warning his side was ready for war.

“You want disorder? It will be welcomed. You want war? It will be welcomed. We have no problem with weapons, no problem with missiles. We will take them from you,” Jumblatt told a news conference.

Speaking four days before the third anniversary of the assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri, Jumblatt warned against a spiral dragging everyone into unrest.

“If the political vacuum continues, if arming and training continue, if the charge of treason and assassinations continue - and it seems that will be the case - we will all be dragged towards disorder,” he said.

Yet, Jumblatt declared that if the opposition wants peace, the Forces of March 14 are ready for it also.

Hariri was killed, with 22 other people, by a car bomb on Beirut seafront on February 14, 2005. The parliamentary majority accused Syria of involvement, a charge which Damascus strongly denies.

Several other anti-Syrian personalities have since been killed, with accusations again leveled at, and rebuffed by, Syria.

A political power struggle between the Western-backed majority and the opposition, supported by Syria and Iran, has plunged Lebanon into its worst political crisis since the end of its 15-year civil war in 1990.

The crisis has left the country without a president since late November when former President Emile Lahoud stood down at the end of his term.

-AFP/NOW Staff