TRIPOLI, Lebanon, June 19 (AFP) - Polling stations opened in north Lebanon on Sunday for a decisive final round of parliamentary elections, with the opposition alliance which led the campaign to oust Syrian troops still well short of a majority.

The voting started at 7:00 am (0400 GMT) with some 700,000 people in the two north Lebanon constituencies eligible to elect 13 Muslim and 15 Christian members of the 128-seat parliament.

The list of Saad Hariri, whose father Rafiq Hariri's February assassination sparked the anti-Damascus campaign, needs as many as 21 of the 28 seats up for grabs to be sure of controlling the parliament.

Facing his candidates in the two northern regions that are last to vote in the four-phase poll is an unlikely alliance between Christian firebrand and former exile Michel Aoun and a raft of notables long allied with Damascus.

The voting started in Beirut on May 29, continuing in the south, the Metn (centre) and the eastern Bekaa plain.

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