Lebanese President Emile Lahoud on Sunday vowed that he would not step down, dismissing the opposition's call for his resignation as politically-motivated.

Lahoud made the remarks in a statement while the opposition has held him responsible for the assassination of a former premier and a prominent journalist and called for his resignation.

He said opposition figures leading the resignation campaign had known him over the past six years and never complained about what they now described as the "police state", vowing to expose those seeking to destabilize the country and strip it of its potentials to serve their personal agenda.

Lahoud said he had previously refrained from reacting to attacks by the opposition "not because of weakness or hesitation, but in order to save the country from more divisions."

He, meanwhile, pledged that he is trying his best to preserve Lebanon's unity and "protect the constitution until the last minute of my term."

Samir Qaseer, 45, a front page columnist at Lebanon's leading daily An-Nahar who had for years called for an end to Syria's influence, was killed Thursday in an explosion in the mainly Christian eastern neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh.

The killing of Qasser prompted a new wave of call for an international probe into the incident, reminiscent of a similar call after the Feb. 14 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Source: Xinhua