BEIRUT - A Lebanese Christian leader said Sunday that Hezbollah's war with Israel was a disaster for Lebanon and rapped the Shi'ite Muslim group for rejecting calls to lay down its arms.

"We don't feel [there was a] victory because the majority of the Lebanese people doesn't feel victory," Samir Geagea, head of the Lebanese Forces militia-turned-political party, said at a rally attended by thousands of supporters north of Beirut.

"The majority of the Lebanese people feel that a major catastrophe has befallen them, throwing their present and future up in the air," he said.

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His speech was a response to Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's vow, made at a rally Friday in Beirut's southern suburbs, not to disarm despite international pressure. Some 800,000 Hezbollah supporters cheered Nasrallah at the gathering.

Israel and Hezbollah have both declared themselves victors in the war which killed nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mainly soldiers.

Geagea said a strong state could only emerge after Hezbollah surrenders its weapons.

"Betting on maintaining weapons through force is a wrong bet... No weapons will make us surrender to this de facto reality," he said referring to Hezbollah keeping it arms.

Tens of thousands turn out
Tens of thousands of right-wing Christians turned out at the tumultuous rally north of Beirut, in a show of strength two days after a massive gathering by the rival Muslim Shiite Hezbollah.

The rally, which underscored the continued divisions in Lebanon dating back to the 1975-90 civil war, followed an annual mass to commemorate Christian militiamen killed during the bloody sectarian conflict.

Samir Geagea, the former leader of a Christian militia released from prison last year, backs the Western-leaning government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

Christians make up around 35 percent of Lebanon's population of 4 million people, Shiite Muslims 35 percent and Sunni Muslims 25 percent.

Geagea's supporters, waving his pictures, and white, red and green flags of his Lebanese Forces Party, arrived in buses and cars at the shrine of the Virgin Mary in the town of Harissa, 27 kilometers north of Beirut.

The former warlord, a member of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, had not attended the annual mass for 12 years because of his imprisonment.

He was arrested in April 1994 and his group was banned, after a church bombing killed 10 people. He was later acquitted in the bombing but sentenced to three life terms on several other murder counts, including the killing of pro-Syrian Prime Minister Rashid Karami.

Geagea served 11 years in prison before he was released in July 2005, after Lebanon's parliament approved a motion to pardon him.

He led the Lebanese Forces - the country's most powerful Christian militia during the Lebanese civil war. Israel backed his militia during the war, and during the Israeli invasion in 1982 to expel Palestinian guerrillas.

On Friday, Nasrallah also called for the formation of a new government, repeatedly attacking Siniora's administration, which he called weak and unable to protect Lebanon from Israel. Hezbollah's push for a stronger political role could deepen tensions in a country already sharply divided over the war that killed hundreds of Lebanese.

The guerrillas' fight with Israel sent their support soaring among Shiites. But a large sector - particularly among Christians and Sunni Muslims - opposes Hezbollah and resents it for provoking the fighting by capturing two Israeli soldiers on July 12.