Nasrallah re-elected as Hezbollah leader

BEIRUT, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Hassan Nasrallah has been re-elected as Hezbollah leader for a sixth term, the Lebanese Shiite armed group said on Thursday.

A Hezbollah statement announced on Thursday the end of its general conference, which lasted for months, saying that the conference adopted a new political document, the second of its kind after the open letter of 1985, the group added.

The statement said that the general conference "approved a number of organizational amendments that reflect the party's evolution at several levels in the past few years." It added that Nasrallah, the group's Secretary General, will announce the new political document in a press conference in the coming days.

The third Secretary General of Hezbollah, 49-year-old Nasrallah became the leader of the group after Israel assassinated its leader Abbas al-Musawi in 1992.

Under the leadership of Nasrallah, the Shiite group fought a 34-day war with Israel in the summer of 2006, which killed more than 1,200 civilians, most of them Lebanese.

Naim Kassim also has been re-elected as the group's deputy leader.

Hezbollah's leadership elections are usually held every three years, but they were last held in 2004.

Now the group holds two seats in Lebanon's 30-seat newly-formed national-unity government, the ministry of agriculture and the state ministry of administration reform.