Bumpy path seen to tight Lebanon vote

By Tom Perry - Analysis

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rival Lebanese leaders have stepped up their rhetoric ahead of a parliamentary election next year, expected to be a tight contest between Syria's allies and foes and a potential trigger for more instability.

The political showdown, which spilled into armed conflict earlier this year, confronts Lebanese with stark choices over whether their country should look east or west for allies and lead or abandon conflict with Israel.

Expected by June, the vote will decide whether a Sunni-led coalition backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States holds on to its slim majority or loses to an alliance headed by Shi'ite group Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran and Syria.

The group's powerful arsenal remains one of the most divisive issues at the heart of a Lebanese crisis which was defused but not fully resolved by a Qatari-mediated deal in May.

The Doha agreement, which was blessed by the rival camps' foreign backers, should continue to contain Lebanon's problems in the short term. But the political temperature is climbing again as the election approaches.

"There's certainly a lot of anxiety about the elections ... a lot of posturing and trying to drum up emotions," said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Endowment's Middle East Centre in Beirut.

Defeat would be a blow to the "March 14" majority alliance which rode to power on a wave of anti-Syrian sentiment created by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in 2005. Syria has always denied involvement in the killing.

More assassinations are a possibility in the run up to the election, Suleiman Franjieh, a Christian member of the pro-Syria "March 8" alliance, told Reuters. Nine politicians, all but one of them anti-Syrian, have been killed since 2005.