BEIRUT: The leader of the Kataeb [Phalange] Party Amin Gemayel warned Friday that Lebanon was facing “a major crisis” that could push it to a state of war, calling on rival political leaders to cooperate to save the country.

In a speech opening the party’s 29th conference, Gemayel, a key figure in the opposition March 14 coalition, called on Hezbollah to place its arms under the Lebanese Army Command and to hand over four of its members accused of involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The three-day conference, held at the Grand Hills hotel in Broummana, and attended by Kataeb MPs and members, will elect members of the party’s political bureau after Gemayel was re-elected party leader unopposed.

Gemayel issued an appeal for the Lebanese to close ranks and be vigilant in order to prevent “major developments” in the Middle East and the world from taking place at Lebanon’s expense.

“Lebanon is going through a major crisis that teeters on the edge of war. If all the Lebanese parties do not rise to the level of historic responsibility, nothing can guarantee that the country will not pass from the bank of the cold war to the hot war with all the dangers of existence it carries this time,” he said.

Gemayel said that placing Lebanon in a state of war was part of a plan aimed at allowing a certain party to reap gains of the war without its military outbreak.

Apparently referring to Hezbollah, he said: “The gains that the party involved in this plan wants to achieve involve one of two evils: either consolidating a statelet or taking over the entire state. In both cases, this party presents the Lebanese with two other evils: either open strife or a final partition.”

“But let everyone know that our only choice is two choices together: unity and the state. The Lebanese, Muslims and Christians, will not allow any party to change Lebanon’s identity and put an end to the Lebanese entity that has existed for hundreds, even thousands of years,” Gemayel said.

Gemayel sought to reassure Hezbollah that no one was after the party’s head. But he stressed that the Lebanese will not accept to be threatened with Hezbollah’s weapons.

“Before reaching the point of no return, Hezbollah must realize that its project is doomed to inevitable failure,” he said, adding: “Irrespective of the international tribunal, we affirm to Hezbollah that no one in Lebanon is seeking its head. But we will not accept its arms to threaten our heads.”

Since former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s government was toppled on Jan. 12 by the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance, Hariri and his March 14 allies have launched scathing campaigns against Hezbollah, accusing it of using its weapons to achieve political gains. They have since repeatedly called on Hezbollah to surrender its arms to the Lebanese Army.

Hezbollah has also been accused by March 14 parties of running its own statelet at the expense of state authority.

Hezbollah’s arms and the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is probing the Hariri assassination, have sharply split the Lebanese into two rival camps.

Gemayel accused Hezbollah of using the “Israeli security logic” to maintain its presence. He said the Kataeb Party was ready to work with Hezbollah as partners to allay its concerns and draft a new national charter.

Gemayel said the Kataeb Party was determined to live together with Hezbollah in one state. But he said Hezbollah must recognize the Lebanese state and its democratic system, put its arms under the Lebanese Army’s command, hand over the four suspects to the international tribunal and disavow them. He said responsibility for resisting an Israeli attack on Lebanon should be assigned to the state.

“In other words, no to Hezbollah’s arms outside the state. Yes to Hezbollah inside the state. The arms have erected a wall between Hezbollah and all the Lebanese,” Gemayel said. He added that Palestinian arms in and outside the refugee camps should also be handed over to the Lebanese state.

Gemayel, whose son Pierre, was killed in a car ambush in 2006, said his party supported the STL “because we believe in justice. We believe in justice because we want stability … We do not believe in revenge because we are the sons of God.”

Gemayel said the 30-member Cabinet of Prime Minister Najib Mikati, which has been dismissed by the March 14 parties as a Hezbollah-dominated government, has put Lebanon in the eye of the storm.

“The way this government was formed, its policy statement and its actual policy based on ignoring justice and U.N. resolutions have put Lebanon in the eye of the storm and in confrontation with the majority of the Lebanese people and all the international community,” Gemayel said.“The current government was not formed to achieve development projects, but to confront the tribunal and justice and sever Lebanon’s links with the United Nations resolutions, the Arab and friendly states and the international community in general,” he added.

Referring to President Michel Sleiman’s call for national dialogue between the rival factions, Gemayel said: “What is the use of dialogue, at least until now, on [Hezbollah’s] arms when they consider them as sacred and eternal, on the republic when they have their own republic, on democracy when they foiled it by a coup, and on the tribunal when they consider the killers sacred?”

Responding to questions from journalists on Lebanon’s decision to dissociate itself from a U.N. Security Council statement condemning Syria’s violent crackdown on anti-regime protesters, Gemayel said, “We have been calling for neutrality. Lebanon stays neutral on divisive issues. But in this issue it was not a choice between a state and another or between a regime and another. It concerns human rights where killings are taking place without mercy … We cannot stay neutral between right and wrong or between a civilized behavior and a criminal behavior Syria is witnessing.”

Meanwhile, MPs from Hariri’s parliamentary Future bloc have denounced Lebanon’s position at the Security Council.

Beirut MP Ammar Houri, speaking to the Voice of Lebanon radio station, said he apologized to the Syrian people for what the Lebanese government did at the Security Council. “As if official Lebanon is saying: Yes, we agree to what the Syrian people are subjected to,” Houri said.

Akkar MP Hadi Hobeish told Asharq radio station: “Lebanon’s position at the Security Council is an indication that Lebanon is fully in the grip of Syria … This position is shameful for Lebanon – as if it supports the use of violence.”

Beirut MP Jean Hogassapian told the Voice of Lebanon radio: “Lebanon’s position at the U.N. Security Council will negatively affect its international credibility and put it outside the international unanimity if it continued to confront the entire world. At the same time, it might expose Lebanon’s foreign relations to danger.”

Meanwhile in north Lebanon, Tripoli MP Mohammad Kabbara told visitors in the city that “Lebanon today, after its disgraceful position at the U.N. Security Council, has become a partner of the Syrian regime in the responsibility for every drop of blood and every martyr falling in the massacres committed against the Syrian people.”