An elderly woman is helped by a Hezbollah volunteer to cast her ballot in a polling station in Nabattiyeh, southern Lebanon, Sunday, June 5, 2005. Citizens who came to polling stations in southern Lebanon on Sunday expressed strong support for Hezbollah, the guerrilla group that fought Israel during an 18-year occupation and is now facing international pressure to disarm.. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
Lebanon Voters Show Support for Hezbollah
By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer
BINT JBEIL, Lebanon - Voters walked past veiled young women handing out campaign fliers Sunday in southern Lebanon, where the front-runner was Hezbollah and the vote was seen as a referendum on whether the Syrian-backed militant group will be allowed to stay armed.
The regional balloting marked the second of four rounds of voting to be held on consecutive Sundays in the first election in three decades to be held without Syrian troops in the country.
Emboldened by the Syrian troop withdrawal in April, the opposition hopes the elections will end Damascus' control of the legislature and the campaigning was cast as a contest between pro- and anti-Syrian camps. But the vote in southern Lebanon was geared toward rejecting international pressure to disarm Hezbollah in line with a U.N. Security Council resolution, which was sponsored by the U.S. and France.
Hezbollah, labeled a terrorist organization by Washington, teamed up with its rival, the Amal movement, for the parliamentary elections in the largely Shiite Muslim south. The joint ticket was expected to easily sweep the 23 seats in that region, which borders Israel.
Voters expressed strong support for Hezbollah, which fought Israel during an 18-year occupation and is credited with forcing Israeli troops to withdraw from the region.
Outside one polling station, loudspeakers mounted on cars belted out militant songs and speeches by the group's leaders.
Amal also fought Israeli forces in the early years but the group was later overshadowed by Hezbollah, whose name means Party of God.
The balloting in the south was peaceful, but Druse supporters of opposition leader Walid Jumblatt and rival Talal Arsalan clashed in central Lebanon, where voters are to go to the polls next Sunday. Seven people were wounded in the gunfire in the mountain resort of Sofar before troops intervened and separated the two sides, the official National News Agency reported in the first major election-related violence.
In the south, Lebanese security officials said a Katyusha rocket set to be fired on Israel from a border area was dismantled by security forces late Saturday before it was launched.
In last Sunday's polls in Beirut, anti-Syrian opposition candidates took most of the capital's 19 parliamentary seats.
Hezbollah is fielding 14 candidates across Lebanon, hoping to build on the nine seats it holds in the 128-member legislature. It won one seat in Beirut.
Outside a polling station in the port city of Tyre, a picture of party leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah with a 'Yes' written on it hung near a portrait of President Bush wearing a cowboy hat and the word 'No' written on the bottom. At the entrance of Bint Jbeil, a Shiite town several miles from the Israeli border, a yellow Hezbollah banner read: "Free people make free elections."
"We should show our support for the resistance and those who were martyred for the sake of liberating this country," Kamel Hamka, 77, said. 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 Israeli occupation.
"If it weren't for the resistance and the martyrs, I wouldn't be here voting today," he said.
The area has seen occasional tension with the Jewish state since the Israeli troop withdrawal from a border security zone in southern Lebanon in 2000. Hezbollah 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 group also is supported by Iran.
The elections came after last week's assassination of an anti-Syrian journalist and continuing calls by the opposition for President Emile Lahoud's resignation and amid lingering anger over the Feb. 14 assassination of Rafik Hariri.
Hariri's killing triggered mass protests at home and anger from governments abroad that ultimately drove out the Syrian army. The opposition blamed Syria and its Lebanese government allies for the killing, charges they both denied.
Lebanese were choosing from 53 candidates in the south, although six were uncontested.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who heads the Amal movement, also urged supporters to turn out in large numbers "to vote against Resolution 1559."
The U.N. resolution required Syrian troops to leave Lebanon and demanded militias surrender their weapons. The United States also has called for the group to disarm. Hezbollah has refused, however, and Lebanese authorities have rejected U.S. and U.N. demands to dismantle the party, saying it is a resistance movement, not a militia.
Syria maintained troops in Lebanon since 1976, when they were sent as peacekeepers during that country's 1975-1990 civil war. The troops remained until April, while Syria dominated Lebanon's politics.
