By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

BEIRUT, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Despite the violence that has convulsed Lebanon -- and claimed his own son's life -- Ghassan Tueni still believes that what binds the Lebanese is greater than what divides them.

"I'm an optimist. At 80, it's too late to change," he says.

"Our unity is natural, not the contrary," he insists in his office in the gleaming headquarters of Lebanon's independent daily an-Nahar, founded by his father Gebran Tueni in 1933.

Tueni took back the reins of the newspaper after his son, also named Gebran, was blown up on Dec. 12 in one of 14 attacks on anti-Syrian journalists and politicians that followed former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri's killing 10 months earlier.

He also re-entered parliament unopposed to fill the vacancy left by his son and regain a seat he had first won in 1951.

"It wasn't easy to fit in a parliament where you couldn't find any of your contemporaries," he said with a wry smile. "It (the vote) was more a homage to my son and to what he stood for than a plebiscite on my policy."

In a country prey to sectarian feuding, foreign interference and periodic bloodletting, Tueni retains his faith that the religious tolerance and coexistence he advocates will prevail.

"He (Gebran) died preaching for unity between Christians and Muslims. We are not about to abandon that dream," he said.

Tueni acknowledged that even in Europe, secular societies are under challenge from a rebirth of religious sentiment.

"I won't say fanaticism, but we must reorient this feeling towards spirituality," he said. "The more religions go back to their spiritual roots, the less they behave like tribes."

Such behaviour helped hurl Lebanon into years of bloodshed.

"Anybody who starts military or paramilitary activity in Lebanon stands more to lose than to gain," he said, arguing that none of its myriad communities can dominate the country alone.

LEBANESE SOLUTION

Sprightly for his years, with bushy grey hair, Tueni is not disconcerted by Hezbollah's threat to take to the streets this month unless its demand for a change of government is met.

"I think it will be resolved in the normal Lebanese manner," he said, adding that agreeing on a reform programme and the formation of an international tribunal to try Hariri's killers is more vital than tussling over the composition of the cabinet.

Hezbollah, aided by Syria and Iran, has been at odds with Lebanon's Western-backed government over the 34-day war sparked in July by its seizure of two Israeli soldiers in a border raid.

Tueni believes the Shi'ite Islamist movement, the only Lebanese faction to keep its weapons after the 1975-90 civil war, can be accommodated in the political system and will not attempt to turn Lebanon into an "Iranian satellite".

He says Lebanon "has to be reinvented every day" but does not minimise the perils faced by a country that has always reflected the currents and turmoil of the wider Middle East.

"The Syrians will continue caressing the dream of returning to Lebanon and their irredentism is there to stay, but so what?" he asked, noting that dreams of Arab unity are just as elusive.

Tueni, a former U.N. ambassador and minister whose sharp editorial pen landed him in jail several times, opposed Syria's influence, but does not want Lebanon to fall into a U.S. orbit.

"They (the Americans) should continue to be present, to have a political role, but not too much of one," he said.

He counselled Washington to return to a role of honest broker in the Middle East to regain its credibility, especially after Hezbollah "destroyed the myth of Israeli invincibility".

Tueni, a Greek Orthodox Christian, holds Israel primarily responsible for destabilising Lebanon, a pluralistic country that "disproves the Israeli theory of a religious state".

Erudite and fluent in Arabic, English and French, Tueni often slips into historical digressions or digs up reminiscences from his long career as journalist, diplomat and statesman.

But he maintains a dignified silence about his deluge of personal tragedy -- apart from the killing of the 48-year-old Gebran, he lost his seven-year-old daughter and later his poet wife to cancer, as well as his older son in a car crash.

"No answer, I wear a black necktie, so what?".

What accounts for his strength in adversity?

"I believe in God, I don't go to church every Sunday."

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