Grand Ayatollah Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah said Iraqi Shiite political leaders and clerics have been united in their rejection of the occupation and in their public calls for U.S. and British forces to leave the country.

"So far, the (anti-U.S.) resistance does not have clear objectives. When we examine the message of (Iraqi) Shiite leaders and clerics, we find that there is a single voice in rejecting the occupation and in calling on the occupation to leave Iraq to the Iraqis," Fadlallah said in a live interview with the Lebanese Future television station late Tuesday.

"(Joining the resistance) is not very far if the occupation continues to afflict the Iraqis, becoming a tool to restrict the Iraqis' freedom," he said.

Fadlallah, 67, strongly opposed both the regime of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the U.S.-led war against Iraq.

Fadlallah spent more than 30 years studying and teaching Islamic jurisprudence in the Shiite holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq and is a cousin of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a senior Iraqi Shiite cleric who was killed in a car bombing in a mosque in Najaf last week.

Fadlallah said he wanted to return to Najaf but would not do so under the U.S. occupation.

"I don't like to go to an occupied country," he said.