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Contenders in last-ditch stab to win Lebanon votes
Fri Jun 5, 2009 12:06pm EDT
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By Yara Bayoumy
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese candidates canvassed for votes on Friday, the last day of campaigning before a parliamentary vote in which Shi'ite Hezbollah and its allies hope to reverse the anti-Syrian coalition's majority.
Across Lebanon candidates met voters in their constituencies in last-minute efforts to sway them before Sunday's election.
Iranian-backed Hezbollah, whose allies include Christian leader Michel Aoun, is competing with an anti-Syrian bloc backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia which won a 2005 election.
Analysts expect a very tight race with no camp securing a comfortable victory. The most likely outcome will be a national unity government, similar to the current one, they say.
Saad al-Hariri, the Sunni Muslim leader of the anti-Syrian coalition, struck a conciliatory tone in a speech to the final campaign rally of his Future movement in Beirut.
"All what we wish for is that that our opponents would recognize the result of the election," Hariri told a cheering crowd. "The decision (on Sunday) ... is the decision that will determine the fate in Lebanon."
Lebanon has witnessed a period of calm in the run-up to the election. Political and Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian tensions brought Lebanon to the brink of civil war last year.
More than 100 people were killed in sectarian violence before an agreement led to the election of President Michel Suleiman and the formation of a national unity government.
OBSERVERS
Despite fears of violence on election day, Interior Minister Ziad Baroud said he expected the vote to go smoothly.
"I reject the insinuation that Sunday will be a day of problems," Baroud said. A recent rapprochement between regional rivals Syria and Saudi Arabia has also helped defuse tensions.
Lebanese security forces will deploy 50,000 men across the country of 4 million people to maintain security on Sunday. Around 200 international observers will be monitoring the vote.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter whose Carter Center has 50 observers monitoring said he expected the United States to accept the poll's outcome.
"I see the United States accepting the results of the election, no matter who wins, because it would be obviously in the best interest of Lebanon for peace and stability for the will of the people as expressed honestly during an election to be honored," Carter told Reuters in an interview.
"And it would be counter-productive for the United States to take an action that would result in disharmony or even possible violence and a disruption of the government in Lebanon." Continued...
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