The pro-Syrian Shiite Muslim Hezbollah coalition claimed yesterday a sweeping victory in south Lebanon elections which it said was a clear message that anti-Israel guerrillas should be able to keep their arms.
The mighty Hezbollah and rival Shiite movement Amal announced a clean sweep of all 23 seats in the second round of the parliamentary elections, with a pledge to keep on with the armed resistance against Israel.
In the first elections to be held since Syria was forced by intense global pressure to end last month its 29-year military presence in Lebanon, the two groups maintained their grip on the volatile southern region still intermittently rocked by border clashes with Israel.
PHOTO: EPA
"The southerners wanted to state clearly a `yes' for a unified stand toward the resistance and for the unity of Lebanon," Hezbollah number two Sheikh Naim Qassem told reporters after Sunday's vote.
"They gave a clear message to the foreigners, particularly to the Americans, that the people of Lebanon are unified over the resistance and the independence" of the country, he said. Official results were to be announced yesterday.
Amal's influential chief Nabih Berri, who is also Lebanon's parliamentary speaker, said: "I thank the people of southern Lebanon for their confidence in the coalition and for its continued victory, with all its candidates."
"This is not a steamroller victory ... this is a victory that is like the waves of the sea, it cannot subside before fulfilling its demands and objectives in ending deprivation and deterring aggression," he said.
Amal groups fought Israeli troops after they first invaded Lebanon in 1978, but the flame of the resistance was later primarily carried by Hezbollah during the last 15 years of Syrian domination.
Hezbollah, the only armed group not required to lay down its arms after Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war because it was spearheading the resistance, has vowed to continue to fight for the disputed Shebaa Farms border district.
The UN resolution sponsored by France and the US that paved the way for Syria's troop withdrawal in April also calls for the disarming of militias in Lebanon.
Hezbollah officials have repeatedly accused the administration of US President George W. Bush -- which maintaints Hezbollah on its terror list -- of interference in Lebanese internal affairs.
A senior Lebanese official said turnout for the two constituencies in southern Lebanon was around 45 percent, according to preliminary official estimates after the close of polling stations.
"On the 23rd anniversary of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and amid tough pressures on Lebanon to end its resistance, the south scored a high turnout which came as a popular and political umbrella to protect the resistance and its weapons," said a paper.
The Al-Liwaa newspaper also noted that "the electoral machines of Hezbollah and Amal succeeded in turning the elections into a referendum for national choices, mainly the protection of the resistance."
With the two groups also likely to secure other seats in other regions in Lebanon's four-round vote, Amal and Hezbollah are expected to keep a total of 17 and 12 ministers of parliament respectively in the 128-seat parliament. Hezbollah and Amal -- which once fought against each others during the civil war -- have maintained an electoral alliance in successive legislative polls since the end of the civil war.
Turnout was greater among Shiite than among Christians and Sunni Muslims, after calls for a boycott because the Syrian-inspired 2000 electoral law drowned the votes of minorities in the sea of Shiite votes.
The first stage of legislative polls on May 29 was won by anti-Syrian groups headed by Saad Hariri, the son of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri whose February assassination unleashed a massive political upheaval.
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