BEIRUT, October 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah warned on Tuesday October 15, that its forces would retaliate "within minutes" if Israel targeted the Wazzani water project in south Lebanon.

"The Hezbollah leadership has informed the headquarters of the Islamic Resistance of its decision that any attack on the installations on the Wazzani River should be met with a categoric, firm and decisive response," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah as saying.

"The riposte will be extremely fast, and I am not exaggerating if I say within minutes -- we won't wait hours or days," Nasrallah told a student gathering In Beirut.

"The targets for retaliation have been defined precisely -- our brothers know what to do and will need only a two-second phone call," he stressed.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned that he regarded Lebanon's project to take water from the Wazzani river to supply some 40 border villages as grounds for war.

Lebanon plans to launch the project at an inauguration ceremony Wednesday October 16, to be attended by government ministers and thousands of citizens.

The war of words between the Lebanese and Israeli governments has toned down in recent days with mediation missions to the region by the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia.

Lebanon successfully completed Wednesday October 9, a trial to pump water from Wazzani spring despite Israeli warnings.

"We have completed a successful trial operation on the pumps, and we are working for the October 16 official inauguration ceremony," Qabalan Qabalan, director of the state Council of the South, told AFP.

"We do not care about the Israeli threats. We want to obtain our rights from our own waters," he said after the 45-minute trial to test water pumping from the Wazzani source to a main tank about 1.5 kilometers (one mile) away.

A few hundred meters (yards) away, Israeli soldiers watched the operation closely through binoculars.

Sharon has threatened war over Lebanon's plan to tap the Wazzani, which indirectly feeds the Sea of Galilee, Israel's main fresh water source.

But officials from Sharon's office made no immediate comment on the water pumping trial.

Lebanon also announced Wednesday, that it had completed a 100-page report to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to defend its right to Wazzani River.

The report said the two new pumps at Wazzani can exploit a total of 12,000 cubic meters per day, or 4.38 millions of cubic meters per year, bringing the total quantity to 10 million cubic meters (325 million cubic feet) per year.

The quantity is way below the 35 million (1.235 billion) granted to Lebanon under the unratified 1955 Johnston agreement.

The file was drafted by a committee formed by the Lebanese government on September 19 and made up of technical experts, senior civil servants and chaired by Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.