JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Wednesday he opposed making public testimony given to a high-level inquiry into last year's Lebanon war against Hezbollah.

"Our position is to refrain - at this stage - from releasing testimony heard by the Winograd committee because this would result in real damage to Israel's vital interests," his office said in a statement.

"This is a tangible and immediate concern to the country's security, foreign affairs and to people and bodies which dealt and continue to deal with these concerns."

Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz have been under mounting public pressure to resign over the government's handling of last year's 34-day war against the Shiite Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon.

Although Olmert has no power to decide whether the closed-door testimonies are made public, his opposition is seen as a sign that the beleaguered premier increasingly fears the committee's findings, due to be published in an interim report in April.

About 70 politicians and military officials, including Olmert, have testified before the commission since it was set up on September 17 under pressure from thousands of military reservists who demanded a full-scale inquiry into the war.

Last month, the government-appointed committee said it would publish transcripts of some of the testimony collected since it began its work late last year.

The commission, headed by former judge Eliyahu Winograd, has said its report will include "assessments of the personal responsibility of the prime minister, defence minister and outgoing chief of staff in the decision-making regarding the decision to launch the operation."

During the July 12 to August 14 war, northern Israel was hit by more than 4,000 rockets and missiles fired by the Shiite movement from south Lebanon, forcing more than one million Israelis to huddle in bomb shelters for much of the time and scores to flee south.

More than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers, were killed in the war which failed to achieve its main objectives - to stop Hezbollah rocket fire into Israel and to secure the release of two soldiers seized by militants in the July 12 cross-border raid that sparked the conflict.

Israel was also slammed abroad for the devastating use of its firepower in Lebanon, where more than 1,200 people - mostly civilians and about one-third of them children - were killed. -Agencies