Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest in this interview

recorded on the 25th of September is a government minister watching his country caught up in an

unfolding disaster, which he and fellow ministers seem to have no capacity to avert. Amin Salam is Lebanon's Minister of Economy and Trade.

He took the job in inauspicious circumstances amid a currency crisis, spiraling inflation and

unemployment. And if anything, the situation now looks even worse. Because now Lebanon is facing the very real possibility of being the

main arena in a long-feared Middle East war. In the last month, Israel is dramatically up the ante

in its long-running confrontation with the militant Shia group, Hisbola, which is entrenched in Lebanon,

but is funded and armed by Iran.

Ever since Hamas launched its murderous attack in southern Israel last October, which triggered a relentless Israeli military assault on Gaza, Hisbola has been supporting Hamas with rocket fire

aimed at northern Israel.

Israel now says it is determined to end that, Hisbola threat.

They've already inflicted grievous blows with targeted assassinations,

an extraordinary attack by way of booby-trapped electronic devices,

and in recent days the relentless bombing of Hisbullah heartlands in South Lebanon

and South Beirut. But still, his Bulla's rocket fire into Israel continues. Does that mean Israel

will launch another ground invasion of Lebanon? Can the Lebanese government do anything to prevent it?

Well, Amin Salam joins me on the line from

Beirut. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you, Stephen. War is happening to Lebanon, Minister, and yet war

is the last thing that Lebanon wants. How does that make you feel right now? You said it, Stephen, it's the last thing

we need. It's the last thing we would have wanted to happen. And we were hoping and praying

and doing our best for the past year since the war started in Gaza, through diplomatic channels,

through every channel possible, to avoid going into a full-blown war that Lebanon today is paying a very, very heavy price.

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