BEIRUT - Lebanon's Maronite Christian bishops warned on Wednesday that elections starting this month would under-represent their community in favour of Muslim politicians and upset the country's delicate sectarian balance.

"Insisting on holding parliamentary elections under this unfair law will have detrimental consequences that we do not want or wish for," the Council of Maronite Bishops said in a statement after an emergency meeting.

"We call on all Christian and Muslim officials to look at this delicate situation and put national interests ahead, holding onto the coexistence that brings together Muslims and Christians on an equal footing," it said.

"Pardoned is the one who has forewarned," were the alarm words used for the first time by the Maronite bishops in an official statement summing up the outcome of an emergency meeting they held under Patriarch Sfeir in Bkirki at midmorning.

The statement said the 2000 law, which was promulgated under Syria's tutelage, constitutes a 'cruel injustice' for Lebanon's Christians, who are entitled for one half of parliament's 128 seats under the 1989 Taif accord, which halted the civil war and later became the nation's constitution.

"Instead, the current law enables the Christians to elect only 15 members to the new parliament from the 64 seats they are entitled for," the statement said. "The other 49 Christians will be elected by Muslim votes and thus they will owe allegiance to the Muslim leaders on whose lists they were elected."

The Maronite Church said the elections should be held under a new law making the precinct an electoral constituency to ensure a true representation of the Christians. "Otherwise there will be a Christian disenchantment with which Lebanon will be in discomfort."

The statement did not propose a way out of the current impasse, admitting that time has run out for promulgating a new law in time for the May-June elections. It added: "We call on all Lebanese officials to act and prevent the harmful repercussions of this law."

Lebanon's political system carefully distributes political offices among myriad religious minorities who fought a 15-year war that split the country into Christian and Muslim enclaves.

The Taif Accord that ended the 1975-1990 civil war grants half the seats in parliament to Christians and half to Muslims.

But the bishops said the law organising the polls, held in four rounds from May 29 to June 19, will penalise Christians and effectively give them less power in the chamber.

The bishops said the election law was imposed against the wishes of most Lebanese, whose street protests helped force Syria to end its 29-year military presence last month.

The law carves Lebanon into a mixture of larger and smaller constituencies favouring Damascus' allies. It is expected to bring most of the same faces back.

Most Christian lawmakers, who want smaller constituencies so their voice is not lost among Muslims in larger voting areas, have protested against the law but did not have the majority to overturn it, particularly as the constitutional deadline for timely elections approached.

Observers

The first batch of 90 European Union election observers arrived in Beirut on Wednesday, officials said. A two-member U.N. election assistance team is already in Lebanon discussing preparations for the ballot with the authorities.

Calls for Syria to withdraw from its neighbour mounted after the killing of Sunni Muslim former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which many Lebanese blamed on Damascus.

The Feb. 14 killing united Christians, Sunnis and Druze into a formidable opposition that also succeeded in toppling the pro-Syrian government and security chiefs and securing an international investigation into Hariri's assassination.

But to the dismay of many Lebanese who had hoped the pullout would mark a fresh start, splits over the law organising general elections are tearing the opposition apart.

Political sources say Hariri's bloc and Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt broke with the opposition to strike a secret deal with the pro-Syrian Hizbollah and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to keep the 2000 electoral law that serves them at the ballot box at the expense of most Christian opposition legislators.

Publicly, the opposition insists it remains united.

Christians, who are estimated to make up about 40 percent of the population, are split into four main camps: those loyal to Syria, a bloc of anti-Syrian deputies, supporters of anti-Syrian former general Michel Aoun and followers of the Lebanese Forces, a former rightwing militia.

The return of Aoun from exile and efforts to free the Lebanese Forces leader from jail complicates alliance-making, giving a new voice to Maronites who have felt disenfranchised since the war but further dividing them at the ballot box. (Agencies, Local media)