Lebanese Mp Killing Fails to Deter Presidential Vote

Lebanese leaders today vowed to press ahead with the task of choosing a new president despite the assassination of an anti-Syrian MP.

The powerful car bomb killed Antoine Ghanem and six others in a Christian district of the capital, Beirut, yesterday, threatening to derail efforts by a divided parliament to elect a president.

Ghanem, 64, a member of the Christian Phalange party and a possible compromise candidate, had returned from refuge abroad only two days earlier.

He was the latest victim in a series of political assassinations since February 14 2005, when a large bomb blast killed the former prime minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others. The killings sparked mass protests that forced the exit of Syrian armed forces from Lebanon after 29 years.

Ruling coalition members blamed Syria for the latest murder, but Damascus denied any involvement, as it has for previous killings.

The US-backed prime minister, Fuad Saniora, wrote to the UN secretary-general requesting he add the Ghanem killing to an international inquiry into Hariri's death and other political crimes in Lebanon.

Schools, universities and many businesses in Christian areas of Beirut closed today in a day of mourning and to observe a strike called by the Phalange party. A funeral is scheduled for tomorrow.

Mr Saniora pledged that Lebanon would not be cowed by the assassination and would press ahead with choosing a president.

"The hand of terror will not win and will not succeed in subduing us and silencing us," he said in a statement carried late yesterday by the official news agency. "The Lebanese will not retreat and will have a new president elected by lawmakers, no matter how big the conspiracy was."

President Emile Lahoud is due to step down on November 24, and government supporters view the vote as a chance to elect a less pro-Syrian figure to the post by a simple majority vote of 65. Despite the latest assassination, the anti-Syrian group still commands a majority in parliament, with 68 seats to the opposition's 59.

The militant group Hizbullah and its allies in the pro-Syrian opposition have vowed to block any rival candidate. They can do so by boycotting the vote, preventing the required two-thirds quorum of 85 votes.

The government and opposition have been arguing for weeks over whether the president, who must be a Maronite Christian under the constitution, can or should be elected by a simple majority.

Many Lebanese fear the division over the presidency could lead to two rival governments in a country that had barely started to recover from the 1975-1990 civil war before last summer's conflict with Israel.

Nabih Berri, the parliamentary speaker, said he would press ahead with Tuesday's session and begin the process of electing a president.

"I am going to the session on Tuesday because we don't want the criminals' goals to be met," Mr Berri, a leading member of the opposition, told the An-Nahar newspaper.

Saad Hariri, an MP, blamed the Syrian president. "I have never seen a more cowardly regime than that of Bashar Assad's," said Mr Hariri, who replaced his father, the assassinated former prime minister, as head of the anti-Syrian forces.

Government supporters accuse Syria of seeking to end Mr Saniora's small parliamentary majority by killing off MPs in his coalition.