Syrians vote in controversial poll

BEIRUT, May 28 (AFP): Thousands of Syrians, thronging streets around their embassy in Beirut, on Wednesday streamed to the polls for Syria's controversial presidential poll being staged as civil war rages in the country.

For the early vote by expats, the Yarzeh district of east Beirut was festooned with Syrian flags and portraits of President Bashar al-Assad, who is expected to cruise to victory in the June 3 election.

With security tight for the vote, which the official media back home hailed as a moral triumph for the regime, the yellow flags of Lebanon's Shiite militant movement Hezbollah, a staunch ally of Assad's forces in their brutal three-year showdown with rebels, were also prominent.

Of the estimated three million Syrians living abroad, including both refugees and peacetime residents, only around 200,000 were entitled to vote on Wednesday, in 38 embassies abroad, a foreign ministry source said in Damascus.

"It's a relatively acceptable figure, if we bear in mind the fact that France, Germany and Belgium have banned Syrian citizens" from voting, along with the United Arab Emirates, said Al-Watan, a pro-regime Damascus daily.

The ministry says 40,000 citizens are listed on the electoral register in Lebanon, which hosts more than a million refugees fleeing the violence.