LEBANON: Syria's staunchest allies Hizbullah and Amal swept south Lebanon's general elections yesterday , in a victory widely seen as a vote for anti-Israeli guerrillas to keep their weapons.
Official results were not expected until today but the Amal-Hizbollah list, dubbed the "steamroller", claimed it had won all 23 seats up for grabs in the two southern constituencies by a landslide.
"I thank all my people in the great south for renewing their confidence in the list and for the victory of all its candidates," Amal leader and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri told a news conference in the south.
Many in the Shia Muslim heartland see a vote for Hizbullah as a vote for retaining the group's arms as resistance against neighbouring Israel which occupied the south for 22 years.
Lebanon's elections are being held by region over four weeks.
"I am going to vote for Hizbullah because they liberated the south. We owe them our blood," said Zeinab Yasin in Houla, among the first towns to be abandoned by Israeli troops in 2000.
Hizbullah, which Washington labels a terrorist group, and the more moderate Amal are the dominant forces among the Shias, Lebanon's largest sect.
Voting got off to a slow start as the Amal-Hizbullah alliance, dubbed the "steamroller", had already won six of the 23 seats in the south by default, due to a lack of challengers. Local media, quoting interior ministry sources, said turnout among the 675,000 eligible voters was 38 per cent an hour before polls closed. Results are expected today.
Damascus backed both Amal and Hizbullah during and after the 1975-1990 civil war, and Shias largely stayed away from anti-Syrian street protests that swept Beirut after the February 14th assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Those protests, which united Christians, Sunnis and Druze, forced Syria to bow to world pressure and end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April.
The anti-Syrian opposition is expected to win in most parts of Lebanon, buoyed by public sympathy over Mr Hariri's death and by his son Saad's landslide in the first round in Beirut last week.
But the key issue in the south is different. Banners in many southern towns urged voters to choose the Amal-Hizbullah list as a rejection of international pressure to disarm the guerrilla group, whose attacks were instrumental in driving Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.
The biggest challenges facing the new parliament will include a UN resolution demanding the disarming of Hizbullah and the fate of President Émile Lahoud, a close ally of Syria.
Mr Lahoud yesterday rejected renewed opposition demands that he resign over Mr Hariri's assassination and last week's killing of a prominent anti-Syrian journalist. Central and eastern Lebanon will vote next weekend in what promises to be the most heated round.- (Reuters)