BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun has told a massive anti-government protest in Beirut that the current cabinet was corrupt and should be replaced by a new unity government.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has "made many mistakes" and his government has "made corruption a daily affair," Aoun, a former prime minister, told the cheering crowd gathered in central Beirut's Riad Solh Square.

Siniora and the other ministers in his cabinet, backed by the anti-Syrian parliament majority elected last year, must resign and a national unity government be formed to resolve the political deadlock, Aoun said.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese took the streets on Friday after Aoun and pro-Syrian Shiite Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called for a demonstration and open-ended sit-in to try to force a change of the Western-backed government.

Aoun, speaking from a podium and encased by bullet-resistant glass, called on the people to "continue the sit-in, but not in these numbers, until we reach our goals." -AFP