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Hariri slate expected to win Lebanon finaleFourth round of voting caps months of political upheaval
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YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSTRIPOLI, Lebanon (CNN) -- Candidates led by the son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri were projected to win a solid victory in Lebanon's final round of parliamentary elections Sunday, but official results were not expected until Monday, a Hariri aide said. The national poll, staggered by region over four weekends, is Lebanon's first ballot free of Syrian domination in almost three decades. Syria pulled out its forces in April. Saad Hariri's electoral list, a coalition composed of candidates opposed to neighboring Syria's longtime influence over Lebanon, swept the first round of elections in late May. Spokeswoman Amal Moudalali said Hariri would await the official results before making a statement about Sunday's results. "We are not yet claiming victory. We are still waiting," she said. "But we are ahead in the polls, and we think we are going to win." In the fourth and last round of Lebanon's general election, voters in the north went to the polls to decide which candidates get the last 28 of 128 parliamentary seats up for grabs. "We're looking to the future. We want to build a new country, and we have to have change," Moudalali said. "That's what this is about and what people voted for today." Winning 21 of the 28 seats at stake in Sunday's balloting would give the younger Hariri's slate a majority in the 128-seat parliament. After three rounds of voting, he and his allies had 44 seats. A coalition led by the pro-Syrian Shiite Muslim Hezbollah swept the second round of voting. A pro-Syrian slate led by former army commander Michel Aoun, a Christian, won the third. Adib Farha, a Middle East analyst at American University in Washington and a former adviser to Rafik Hariri, called Sunday's preliminary results "great news for Lebanon, great news for its economic recovery and great news for national reconciliation." But he warned the results also could re-ignite sectarian tensions in a country that fought a grinding civil war from 1975 to 1990 -- the conflict that brought Syrian troops into Lebanon in the first place. "There is concern that the Christians, the majority of whom voted for a hawk in last Sunday's round against the moderates, might misconstrue the election results of today as a victory for the Muslims," Farha said. "Unfortunately, in politics, oftentimes perception becomes more important than the truth." But Hariri's largely Sunni Muslim bloc has drawn the support of some prominent Christians, "and this is not something to be taken very lightly," Farha said. International pressureHariri's father, a businessman-turned-politician, led Lebanon's pro-Syrian government before becoming an advocate of Syria's withdrawal. His death in a February car bombing sparked massive protests and renewed international pressure on the Damascus government to withdraw the nearly 14,000 troops and intelligence officers it had kept in Lebanon for nearly three decades. A U.N. report in March found Damascus interfered with Lebanon's government in a heavy-handed way that was "the primary reason for the political polarization that ensued" before the elder Hariri's killing. The Lebanese opposition has gone further, saying his assassination was an act of political retribution by Syria -- an allegation the Syrians deny. The United States, which also complains that Syria is not doing enough to prevent insurgents from crossing into Iraq, has continued to pressure the Syrian government over its role in Lebanon. Earlier this month, President Bush warned Syria over what he called "troubling" reports that its intelligence officers remain in Lebanon after the April withdrawal. Split resultsIn the first round of voting, Saad Hariri won all seats up for grabs in the capital of Beirut. Syria's most powerful allies in Lebanon, Hezbollah and Amal, another Shiite Muslim group, won phase two of the elections in the southern areas bordering Israel, and have 35 seats so far. In round three of the elections, Lebanon's former army commander Aoun and his allies handed other opposition groups a surprising defeat in Mount Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Candidates backed by Aoun, who recently returned to Lebanon after 14 years in exile, won 15 of 16 seats. Before the third round, Aoun split from another key opposition figure, Walid Jumblatt -- with whom he had supported an independence movement, the so-called Cedar Revolution. That movement peaked in March and pressured Syria to remove its troops from Lebanon. Aoun, 70, instead ran on a platform to defeat old-guard nepotism with the help of pro-Syrian groups. Aoun and his allies had 21 seats going into the fourth round. CNN's Brent Sadler contributed to this report 
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