(Adds Annan calling for talks, paragraphs 18-19) By Nadim Ladki BEIRUT, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Thursday to pursue his campaign to oust Lebanon's Western-backed government but said his powerful Shi'ite Muslim group would not be dragged into a civil war. Speaking via a live video link to tens of thousands of cheering supporters in central Beirut, Nasrallah accused Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of trying to thwart the pro-Syrian Hezbollah in its recent 34-day conflict against Israel. Thousands of opposition followers have been camped out for a week in squares near government headquarters in central Beirut to try to topple Siniora. "You won't hear us accept defeat or weakness or feebleness," he said in a fiery speech that lasted more than an hour. "The door is open for negotiations ... but we will not leave the street before achieving the goal that saves Lebanon." The opposition, which includes a populist Christian party, is demanding the formation of a national unity government and has paralysed the heart of Beirut for the past week in an around-the-clock protest that shows no sign of fading. Some commentators have warned that the tense political stand-off could degenerate into widespread violence in a country that has suffered two civil wars in 50 years. The protests have already ignited several sectarian clashes between Shi'ite Muslims and Sunnis in Beirut, with one Shi'ite demonstrator shot dead in a Sunni neighbourhood last Sunday. However, the black-turbaned Nasrallah said his heavily-armed group, which claimed a "divine victory" in its war with Israel, would not fight against fellow Lebanese. "We will not be dragged into any strife even if you kill a thousand of us. We will not raise weapons in the face of anyone ... Our weapons are only for our Israeli enemy," he said, speaking from an undisclosed location. CONCESSIONS Lebanon's army commander General Michel Suleiman urged his soldiers to stay neutral and said political leaders should not be afraid of making concessions. "Retreating from a personal position or seeking a solution for the sake of public interest is a courageous sacrifice ... and never a defeat," he said in a memo to his soldiers. Thousands of Lebanese soldiers and police are deployed in the mainly Sunni parts of Beirut and around the city centre, while government headquarters, where Siniora and his ministers are holed up, is ringed with barbed wire and armoured cars. The army, which has around 45,000 soldiers and officers, split along sectarian lines in the 1975-1990 civil war. Nasrallah denounced Siniora as a U.S. puppet and said that if he did not swiftly agree to share power with the opposition then Hezbollah would up the stakes and demand a transitional government leading to early parliamentary elections. "Time is not in on your side," he said, accusing some of the anti-Syrian majority of lobbying Washington to get Israel to launch the July-August war on Hezbollah and destroy the group. A government source denied the charge. Israel attacked Lebanon the day after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Siniora allies say their opponents are looking to derail plans to set up an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which many Lebanese blame on Syria, a charge Damascus denies. In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday urged the government and Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian opposition members to return to talks in search of a deal offering a way out of the crisis. Annan remained "very concerned" about the situation in Lebanon "and would renew his call for all the political parties, both the opposition and the government, to return to the table and find a political solution to the current impasse," said his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric. (Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Lebanon and by Irwin Arieff at the United Nations)
