Road ahead for Hezbollah after Lebanon decides to disarm it

Decision 'grave sin', says group, will treat it 'as if it did not exist'

- 

Lebanon's government has decided to task the army with setting a plan to disarm Hezbollah, a thorny issue decades after the last time the country had made factions give up their weapons.

AFP looks at how the government's decision may be implemented, and whether the Iran-backed group can still block it.

The announcement was the first time a Lebanese government has announced it would disarm Hezbollah, the only armed faction that kept its weapons after the 1975-1990 civil war.

Hezbollah has kept its arms in the name of "resistance" against Israel, which occupied Lebanon's south until 2000.

The latest decision strips Hezbollah's weapons arsenal of political legitimacy, breaking with past government statements that recognised the "resistance".