BEIRUT: Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah reiterated Monday his party’s opposition to the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and said Cabinet would either reach consensus or a vote on the divisive matter.

“Hezbollah does not agree and is against financing the tribunal,” Nasrallah told Al-Manar television station in a wide-ranging interview.

“We, the callers of consensus democracy, urge that the issue be placed in Cabinet for discussion so we could reach a consensus on it, and if we fail to do that … then it could be put to vote in Cabinet,” the Hezbollah chief said when asked what his party regarded as the best way of dealing with the matter.

The STL, which in late June indicted four members of Hezbollah in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, has been a divisive issue between the country’s rival parties as well as elements in the government headed by Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

While Mikati, President Michel Sleiman and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt – three centrist elements in the Cabinet – have voiced their support for funding the court, Hezbollah, which denies involvement in Hariri’s assassination, and its other March 8 allies say they are fervently against Lebanon paying its 2011 share of the court, some $32 million.

In his interview Monday, Nasrallah said he understood Mikati’s position and said the prime minister and others in the government were entitled to their opinions.

The Hezbollah chief also dismissed reports that Mikati would resign should the government fail to back the funding of the tribunal and said Lebanon would unlikely face sanctions as a result.

Lebanon has been under intense pressure by the international community to abide by its commitment to United Nations Security Council resolution, including those relating the court, which was established under Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter.

In the wide-ranging interview which lasted over three hours, the Hezbollah chief also reiterated his support for reforms in Syria under the leadership of President Bashar Assad.

Nasrallah, who said he believed the crisis in Syria had been mostly overcome, said Assad’s reform program was genuine but had been thwarted by the United States.

“President Bashar Assad said he was willing to implement reforms … but suddenly international pressure mounted along with internal pressure and it became apparent that what [was being sought] was not reform but the fall of this rejectionist, resistant regime,” Nasrallah said.

Nasrallah praised Syria for the “decisive” support it provided to resistance groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, the fruits of which delivered significant victories, adding that these factors lay behind Washington’s desire to topple Assad’s rule.

“The U.S. does not seek democracy in Syria but the toppling of the rejectionist, resistant regime,” Nasrallah said.

The Hezbollah chief warned that any alternative to reform under Assad would lead to dire scenarios.

“We are against the toppling of a rejectionist, resistant regime that is ready for reform and has already  started reforms for the sake of Syrians … because the alternatives are either a regime that surrenders to the American will and gives Israel what it wants, or [a scenario] that plunges Syria into civil war or one that divides the country.”

Nasrallah urged Syrian protesters to withdraw from the streets and end clashes with security forces in a bid to launch dialogue and to allow for reforms to take effect.

Turning to Arab efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria, Nasrallah accused some Arab states of seeking to topple Assad rather than help in the reform process.

“Unfortunately, some Arab states … aim at toppling the regime rather than implementing reform which serves the Syrian people but toppling the regimes,” he said, adding: “We know whose interests such an event serves,” in an apparent reference to the United States.