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A woman casts her ballot in a polling station in Nabattiyeh, southern Lebanon, where citizens expressed strong support for Hizbullah. (AP)
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| By Associated Press June 5, 2005 |
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Citizens who came to polling stations in southern Lebanon on Sunday expressed strong support for Hizbullah, the guerrilla terrorist group that fought Israel during an 18-year occupation and is now facing international pressure to disarm.
Hizbullah, labeled a terrorist organization by Washington, teamed up with its rival, the Amal movement, for parliamentary elections in the largely Shiite Muslim south and are expected to easily sweep the 23 seats in that region, which borders Israel.
Outside a polling station in the port city of Tyre, a picture of Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah with a 'Yes' written on it was hung near a portrait of U.S. President George W. Bush wearing a cowboy hat and the word 'No' written on the bottom.
At the entrance of Bint Jbeil, a Shiite town several kilometers from the Israeli border, a yellow Hizbullah banner read: "Free people make free elections." Outside the polling station in the town's center, veiled young women Hizbullah activists distributed candidate lists and cars blared from loudspeakers guerrilla songs and speeches from their leaders to encourage voters.
"We should show our support for the resistance and those who were martyred for the sake of liberating this country," a smiling Kamel Hamka, 77, said as he walked out of the polling station.
He said one of his sons was killed during a guerrilla operation against Israelis in 1986, and he sent five children to America and one to Australia to escape the occupation.
"If it wasn't for the resistance and the martyrs, I wouldn't be here voting today," he said.
The area continues to see occasional tension with the Jewish state since the Israeli troop withdrawal from a border security zone in southern Lebanon in 2000. The Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hizbullah expects strong voter support will give it greater political influence to confront international pressure to disarm now that its Syrian backers have withdrawn from the country.
The elections, which are scheduled for two more Sundays in other regions, follow the assassination last week of an anti-Syrian journalist and continuing calls by the opposition for President Emile Lahoud's resignation.
Syria pulled all its troops out of Lebanon in April after three decades of control, and the anti-Syrian opposition hopes the elections will end Damascus' control of the legislature.
In last Sunday's polls in Beirut, anti-Syrian opposition candidates took out most of the capital's 19 parliamentary seats.
But the vote in the predominantly Shiite south has different political objectives than other areas, where the race is largely between the pro- and anti-Syrian camps. In the south, the election is geared toward rejecting international pressure to disarm Hizbullah in line with U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, which was sponsored by the United States and France.
Voters in southern Lebanon are united in their support for Hizbullah, crediting it for forcing Israeli troops to withdraw from the region and in their rejection of international attempts to disarm the group.
Hizbullah, backed by both Syria and Iran, led the guerrilla war against Israel's occupation. The group is fielding 14 candidates across Lebanon, hoping to build on the nine seats it already holds in the 128-member legislature. It has already won a seat in Beirut.
There are 53 candidates running for the 23 seats in the south. Six candidates won uncontested because there were no challengers in their districts.
One contender against the Hizbullah-Amal ticket is Anwar Yassin, a Communist guerrilla who spent 17 years in Israeli prisons. Yassin, 36, was wounded and captured after a 1987 attack on Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. He was tried in an Israeli court and sentenced to 30 years in prison, but was released in a 2004 Israel-Hizbullah prisoner swap.
Yassin, a red scarf wrapped around his neck, acknowledged to LBC television that he had a tough race against the "steamrollers" of Amal and Hizbullah but nevertheless wanted to make his point.
"This is a vote to object against the de facto policy that is being imposed," he said of the groups' monopoly.
Al Manar, Hizbullah's television station, said the elections would serve as a referendum on Hizbullah's political options.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who heads the Amal movement, urged the groups' supporters to turn out in large numbers "to vote against Resolution 1559."
Hassan Fadlallah, a Hizbullah candidate allied with Amal, said: "The south's choice is the resistance choice."
Last year's U.N. Resolution 1559 forced Syrian troops to leave Lebanon and also demands militias -- a clear reference to Hizbullah -- in Lebanon give up their weapons. The United States has also called for the group to abandon its weapons.
Hizbullah has refused to disarm, and Lebanese authorities have rejected U.S. and U.N. demands to dismantle the group, saying it is a resistance movement, not a militia.
Jose Ignacio Salafranca Sanchez-Neyra, who heads a European Union observer mission, said the Thursday killing of anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir had not affected the election process. He spoke to LBC television in the southern provincial capital of Sidon after inspecting a polling station.
Kassir's death by a car bomb reignited hostility against Damascus and prompted calls for Lahoud, Syria's greatest supporter here, to step down. Kassir, 45, a harsh critic of Syria's role in Lebanon, was buried Saturday. Opposition members blame Syria and its local allies for his killing.
The AP contributed to this report.
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