Rival camps fight key Lebanon by-elections

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BIKFAYA, Aug 5 (AFP): Voters in Lebanon cast their ballots Sunday amid tight security in crucial by-elections seen as a test for the country's divided Christian parties ahead of a presidential poll.
Voting is taking place in Beirut and the Metn, a mountainous Christian heartland northeast of the capital, between two parties vying to prove their popularity in order to secure the presidency.
The parliamentary by-elections are being held to replace two anti-Syrian lawmakers killed this year in attacks blamed by the Western-backed majority on former powerbroker Damascus, which supports the Hezbollah-led opposition.
The two murdered MPs were industry minister Pierre Gemayel, a Christian who was gunned down in a Beirut suburb on November 21 last year, and Sunni Muslim Walid Eido, who was killed in a car bombing in the capital on June 13.
Although the election to replace Eido in Beirut is virtually guaranteed to be won by the candidate of the ruling anti-Syrian majority, it is the vote for Gemayel's seat in the Metn region that has the country on tenterhooks.
Former president Amin Gemayel is vying to replace his son Pierre, but the Free Patriotic Movement of Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun is fighting the seat with Camille Khoury, a doctor, as its candidate.
The movement of Aoun, a declared presidential candidate, garnered most of the Christian vote in 2005 legislative polls, but his popularity has waned since he forged a shock alliance last year with the Iran- and Syria-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
The by-elections come amid heightened political and security tensions in the deeply divided country as a deadly showdown between the army and Islamist extremists in a northern refugee camp continues to rage after 11 weeks.
Voters trickled in small numbers to polling stations early Sunday, as soldiers, backed by trucks and armoured vehicles, deployed heavily in the two regions where they set up checkpoints.
In the Metn, giant pictures of Gemayel and his slain son were on display in villages and towns, particularly in their homebase of Bikfaya, where voters cast ballots before heading to the cemetery to place a white rose on Pierre Gemayel's tomb.