Hezbollah is considering its future following the deployment of Lebanese army forces and United Nations peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon, according to Naim Qassem, the organization's deputy secretary-general.

In an interview published yesterday in the London-based Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Qassem said that Hezbollah has still not decided what its policy will be if Israel will not pull out of Shaba Farms, but stressed that the Shi'ite organization has not given up its right to resist.

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The senior Hezbollah figure said that the organization has not made the rebuilding of its military wing a top priority because it still holds a very large arsenal of missiles.

Qassem stressed that Hezbollah has no intention of striking American targets and noted that the opposition to Israel will be carried out solely on Lebanese territory, not "anywhere in the world."

Qassem reiterated the stance of Hezbollah, previously expressed by the group's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, that the organization achieved a historic victory over Israel.

"As a result of the war, there has indeed been great damage to Lebanon, but the decision to go to war was an Israeli/American one, whose declared aim was to destroy Hezbollah," Qassem said. "This aim was not achieved in the end, and thus we consider this to be a historic victory."

Regarding the size of Hezbollah's arsenal, Qassem said that "early in the war, we declared that we had the capability to resist the Israeli army for months, and perhaps that is a clue to the amount of weapons we have available. I will not go into figures because that is a military secret, but it is possible that we still hold 90 percent of our weapons in our depots."

Qassem admitted that the group will not deploy its fighters close to the border with Israel, as it had following the Israel Defense Forces withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, but said this does not mean that Hezbollah was giving up its right to resist the occupation of Shaba Farms.

The Hezbollah official also warned the government of Lebanon not to surrender to Israeli and American dictates regarding border crossings. "Such a policy will have a negative influence on all of Lebanon, not only Hezbollah, bringing Lebanon under the authority of the UN."

Qassem was referring to UN efforts to deploy inspectors along border crossings on the Lebanon-Syria border to ensure that the arms embargo on Hezbollah, which is part of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, was being implemented.