Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Thursday that the opposition would continue the protests until its demand of a national unity government was met.

"We will not leave the street before achieving our target of a national unity government," said Nasrallah in a live broadcast through a wide screen hung on the Riyad al-Solha Square in Downtown Beirut where thousands of protestors camped outside government headquarters.

"Lebanon must be saved from a totalitarian state and a national unity government must be formed," he added.

Nasrallah called on the Lebanese to participate in a demonstration Sunday in central Beirut at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT), vowing that the protest was "peaceful, civil and civilized."

He also pledged that the death of a 20-year-old Shiite opposition supporter after street fights on last Sunday would not lead the protestors to violence.

"We will not use our weapons against anyone...Our weapons are only for our Israeli enemy," Nasrallah told his cheering supporters.

Lebanese opposition supporters have been staging an open-ended sit-in for seven days in Beirut in a bid to topple Prime Minister Fouad Seniora's government and form a national unity cabinet.

Lebanon's political tension mounted last month when six pro- Syria ministers resigned after the country's rival leaders failed to reach an agreement on the formation of a national unity cabinet.

Source: Xinhua