(24 May 2005) SHOTLIST
1. Street scenes with pro-Hariri banners
2. Big poster for late Rafik Hariri and candidate son Saad Hariri
3. Billboard for elections candidate
4. Street scenes with various of candidates pictures
5. Sign showing: "Yes for the right representation of the Christians of Beirut"
6. Various of candidates
7. Wide on press conference in Rabieh (Aoun's house)
8. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Christian leader Michel Aoun:
"It is a story of 15 years of corruption and forgery and many other things that will affect many people who were in the 2000 elections and now they are coming back with elections. There is some difficulties in this. For all this, we've decided to wage the election and the decision will be for the Lebanese."
9. Man putting pictures of candidates on wall in Beirut
10. Street scenes
11. Set up shot for presser of Karina Pirelli
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Karina Pirelli, UN envoy to monitor elections:
"We have found a consensus among the political actors that basically electoral reforms are needed after the elections when it is by international standards. The best practices that the UN knows, the time to discuss an electoral law is in-between elections but not immediately after the elections."
13. Street scenes
14. Candidates pictures
STORYLINE
Christian leader and former warlord Michel Aoun on Tuesday announced he would field his own candidates in Lebanon's upcoming parliamentary elections, a move signalling a split with his Muslim opposition allies and the breakup of a proposed anti-Syrian coalition.
"We've decided to wage the election and the decision will be for the Lebanese," said the former army commander, who returned on May 7 from 14 years' exile.
Aoun's candidates will run in one central district against lists formed by Druse leader Walid Jumblatt and Saad Hariri, son of the slain former premier Rafik Hariri.
Speaking at a news conference at his home, northeast of Beirut, Aoun also said he would run for a seat in the central Mount Lebanon district.
He would not say yet where he would run, but newspapers have said the former interim prime minister could opt for the district of Byblos-Kesrwan in the Christian heartland.
On returning to Lebanon, Aoun vowed to help build a broad opposition alliance, focusing on reforming the political landscape and ridding government corruption, but other opposition figures put together their own election deals that left him in the cold.
Explaining his decision to field his own candidates, Aoun on Tuesday complained that his allies among Sunni Muslim and Druse opposition leaders had tried to marginalise him through a "deal" which he rejected.
Aoun said he failed to reach joint tickets in the Mount Lebanon province after arduous negotiations between representatives of Jumblatt and Hariri.
He said his negotiations failed over an electoral alliance in Aley-Baabda, a mountainous region surrounding the capital with a mixed Christian, Muslim and Druse population.
Aoun said he tried to broaden his Free Patriotic Movement's representation with candidates other than Maronites like himself, but the efforts were rejected.
While Aoun's split was not expected to alter the outcome of the election - which analysts expect to end in victory for those opposed to the current pro-Syrian government - it is certain to energise competition.
Aoun, who fought with army units under his command and lost a so-called "war of liberation" against the Syrian army in Lebanon in 1989, regards himself as the "real opposition".
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