BEIRUT, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, chief of Lebanon's Hezbollah party, pleaded Sunday with President Emile Lahoud to take action if a new head of state was not elected next week, local Naharnet news website reported.

    Nasrallah made the call in a speech delivered on a huge screen set up in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut on the occasion of Martyr's Day.

    "I call on Lahoud to undertake a step or a national rescue initiative to prevent a vacuum if consensus (on a presidential candidate) was not reached or if elections were held by a half-plus-one vote which is worse than a vacuum," Nasrallah was quoted as saying.

    In the speech, Nasrallah also called for early parliamentary elections if consensus was not reached before the end of Lahoud's term, which runs out on Nov. 24.

    Lebanon's presidential election has been postponed from Nov. 12to Nov. 21 to give the anti-Syrian majority coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition more time to break a deadlock over a compromise candidate.

    Lebanese ruling coalition and the opposition have been separated by a wide chasm since six of the latter's ministers resigned from the government of Prime Minister Fouad Seniora in November last year.

    The forecast presidential event caused widespread concern among the Lebanese, fearing further disarrays and possible eruption of violence.