BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanese Christian MP and prominent newspaper editor Gibran Tueni, who was killed in a car bomb attack on Monday, was a vocal anti-Syrian figure and impassioned advocate of his country's independence.

The 48-year-old respected journalist and politician was close to Saad Hariri, son of Lebanon's former Sunni Muslim prime minister Rafiq Hariri who was assassinated in a 2005 Valentine Day's bomb in Beirut.

Many Lebanese, including Tueni, blamed Syria for the murder -- a charge Damascus has repeatedly denied -- and spearheaded calls for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

Amid domestic and international pressure, Damascus did pull out its troops from Lebanon in April, ending nearly three decades of military presence in its smaller neighbour.

Tueni comes from a long line of prominent Lebanese politicians, many of whom had a close call with death in Lebanon's troubled political scene.

His uncle Marwan Hamade escaped an assassination attempt in October 2004 while his father Ghassan Tueni was a former Lebanese ambassador at the United Nations who also served in the government and in parliament.

Hamade, who is Telecommunications Minister, visited the scene of the bombing on Monday and described the MP as the "last martyr of Lebanon's independence and sovereignty". He called for an international inquiry "on all the crimes committed by the Syrian regime for decades in Lebanon."

In June, Tueni, a Greek Orthodox, won a seat in parliamentary elections -- the first since Syria quit Lebanon -- running on the list of Saad Hariri, which swept the polls.

As a journalist, he made the daily An-Nahar a veritable tribunal against the Syrian regime, for the defence of Lebanon's democratic sovereignty, and for human rights.

He was one of the leaders of the "Cedar Revolution" which followed the murder of Hariri and, with international pressure, led to the Syrian pullout.

Tueni was a passionate advocate of the creation of an international tribunal over Rafiq Hariri's killing in light of the international probe commissioned by the United Nations.

He is widely seen as having set the tone against Syrian control over Lebanon in an editorial published in his mass-circulation newspaper as early as March 2000 that made the unprecedented blunt request for Syria to end its domination.

In more recent editorials over the past months Tueni has insisted on Lebanon's independence and strongly criticised Syrian policies, particularly towards Lebanon.

Married twice, Gibran Tueni was father of four girls, including twin daughters born just a few months ago. His eldest daughter is a journalist with An-Nahar where he had been director and which his grandfather founded in 1932. Tueni's mother, Nadia Hamade Tueni, wrote several poetry collections in French, but died while still young. His father, Ghassan Tueni, was a well known editorialist and several times a minister and MP.

Tall, with a slim black moustache, Gibran Tueni was an elegant figure on the Lebanese political scene and was a redoubtable debater.

He was revered by many of Lebanon's young people who thronged conferences which he held -- depite the presence of Syrian troops -- in favour of his country's independence, and to whom he opened the columns of his newspaper.

A former member of the Lebanese Forces militia leadership, he became a fervent supporter of general Michel Aoun who in 1989 called for a "war of liberation against the Syrian occupier". More recently, Tueni took part in setting up the Qornet Shahwan, a grouping of anti-Syrian Christian figures under the leadership of Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir.

The blast that killed Tueni took place one day after the head of the UN panel probing the killing of Rafiq Hariri presented his findings to UN chief Kofi Annan.

Later on Monday, the UN Security Council was due to receive the sensitive report from German magistrate Detlev Mehlis on Syria's cooperation with the probe into the murder of the Lebanese ex-premier.

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