BEIRUT, March 30 (Reuters) - A Lebanese Christian opposition figure said on Wednesday that moves to disarm the Shi'ite Muslim group Hizbollah should start straight after a parliamentary election, sooner than others in the opposition have proposed.

The timing of any disarmament, called for by Washington and the United Nations, is a delicate issue within the anti-Syrian opposition as it tries to improve ties with the pro-Syrian Hizbollah, the only Lebanese political group still to bear arms.

"After the elections ... one of the first issues would be dialogue with Hizbollah about the deployment of the Lebanese army in the south and it should be disarmed when the army itself is in charge," Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian and a former president, told Reuters.
The opposition -- a collection of Sunni Muslim, Christian and Druze groups united by the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri -- expects to win a majority in the currently pro-Syrian parliament in elections due in May.

The opposition has remained broadly united over calls for Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon but analysts say differences may emerge over issues such as how to deal with Hizbollah, which proved its popularity by leading big pro-Syrian demonstrations.
Hizbollah fighters, who helped force Israeli troops out of south Lebanon in 2000, still control some border areas which the United Nations says the Lebanese army should now take over.

Walid Jumblatt, Druze leader and the most prominent opposition figure, said after talks with Hizbollah on Sunday that any disarmament discussion was off the agenda until Israel withdrew from a disputed border area, known as Shebaa Farms.
But Gemayel, who was president for a time during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, said disarmament should happen before then.

ARMY DEPLOYMENT
"There is a legal dispute about the Shebaa Farms and we have to deploy the Lebanese army regardless of the problem," he said from his office in Christian east Beirut.
Hizbollah won wide support in Lebanon for fighting Israeli troops in the south. It vowed to keep its weapons as long as Israel controlled Shebaa Farms, an area Lebanon claims but which the United Nations calls Israeli-occupied Syrian territory.

Hizbollah has also said it would keep its arms as long as Israel "continued to threaten Lebanon". Jumblatt said the meeting with Hizbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah discussed Nasrallah's "apprehensions" about whether the opposition was sticking to the 1989 Taif Accord that ended the civil war. Taif changed the confessional balance of power in Lebanon, which had previously been tilted in favour of Christians. No sect has a majority in the religiously diverse country.
Gemayel said the opposition saw the Taif Accord as central to its policy but some changes should be considered after the election to improve national institutions and reduce the role of sectarian allegiances -- a move outlined in the accord.
"The Taif accord is not perfect. Nobody says the Taif accord is perfect," he said, adding that elections and changes to Taif would a herald a "second republic" in Lebanon after the First Republic that followed independence from France in 1943.
Gemayel said his group had long called for Syrian withdrawal and Hizbollah disarmament, the main features of September's U.N. Security Council resolution 1559.

"Maybe some politicians ... don't want to embarrass Hizbollah. They don't want to embarrass others," he said. "But in fact all of us are calling for the implementation of what is mentioned in 1559."
Gemayel leads a group in the divided Christian Phalange Party, founded in the 1930s by his father. His brother was also elected president but was killed in 1982 before taking office.