Lebanon's vote preparations begin http://www.jordantimes.com/tue/news/news4.htm 
 
BEIRUT (AFP) — Lebanon began preparing Monday for much-awaited legislative elections as cracks emerged in the anti-Syrian opposition camp, exacerbated by the return of Christian hardliner Michel Aoun.
With pressure mounting from the United States, the United Nations and the European Union to hold free and fair elections, politicians began consultations to draw up electoral lists.

"The battle will be difficult but it will be Lebanese... with a free and democratic voice and only the Lebanese flag raised," opposition Druze Muslim leader Walid Jumblatt said. Syria completed the withdrawal of its troops and intelligence officers from Lebanon on April 26, under pressure from both the Lebanese opposition and international community.

Elections for the 128-seat parliament are to be held on four consecutive Sundays starting May 29. But the return of Syria's arch-foe Aoun and the opposition's failure to unite against the Syrian-tailored electoral law used in the 2000 polls, is threatening to bog down Lebanon's quota-based sectarian system of politics. Christian opposition leaders are pressing for a new law based on smaller constituencies but Jumblatt appears to favour the larger constitutional boundaries preferred by the pro-Syrian camp. Jumblatt is backed by MPs from the party of slain former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, a Sunni whose assassination on February 14 galvanised demands for change and paved the way for an end to 29 years of Syrian domination. An election expert told AFP that Jumblatt and the Hariri clan were wary of angering two key pro-Syrian groups — the Shiite movement Hizbollah and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's group Amal. Hizbollah, the only Lebanese group to still carry arms after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, is revered in many parts of Lebanon for having forced Israel to pull out from the country in May 2000 after 22 years of occupation.

Since his triumphant return Saturday from 15 years of exile in France, Aoun has been holding court at his home in the residential suburb of Rabiyeh, patching up ties with old foes, including Hizbollah.

On Sunday, he received Sitrida Geagea, the wife of jailed Christian warlord Samir Geagea who fought a bloody battle against Aoun's forces in the dying days of the civil war, and the pair agreed to "turn a page on the past."

His guests Monday included Hizbollah representative Ali Ammar who said a meeting would be held soon between Aoun, the former armed forces chief, and Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hizbollah.

Ammar added that Hizbollah shared Aoun's calls for political reform.

Aoun pledged to rid Lebanon of "old feudal models and religious sectarianism" — an ambitious scheme to reform a system dating back to Ottoman rule, perpetuated under the 1920-1943 French mandate and still in force. Publicly the scions of feudal and bourgeois Christian and Muslim families, who have ruled over the destinies of Lebanon for nearly 150 years agree with Aoun's views, but privately they will have a hard time to swallow his ideals.

Aoun has ruffled feathers by insisting he freed Lebanon of Syrian rule thanks to testimony before the US Congress in 2003 that paved the way for sanctions on Syria and last year's UN Security Council Resolution 1559.

"The march towards liberation has ended and the march towards change has begun," according to Jibran Bassil, a member of Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement.

UN top elections official Carina Perelli, meanwhile, held talks Monday with acting Foreign Minister Elias Murr a day before the arrival of a 90-strong team of European Union observers.

"We have been welcomed by the Lebanese authorities to come and provide any sort of assistance they might require" to prepare for the polls, she said.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005