Lebanon media in war of words on minister's funeral

BEIRUT, Nov 25 (Reuters) The streets of central Beirut had returned to normal; only a huge picture of Pierre Gemayel and the slogan ''We will not forget'' remained of the tributes paid to the slain cabinet minister by an emotional crowd.

While the streets were quiet yesterday morning, a war of words and pictures in the press and on the airwaves -- focusing on the size of the crowd -- symbolised the mounting tension between the anti-Syrian government and the opposition led by pro-Syrian Hezbollah.

Tens of thousands answered the Western-backed government's call and turned out in force at Gemayel's funeral on Thursday.

But the crowd was smaller than that on March 14 last year after former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri's assassination, when hundreds of thousands of Lebanese demonstrated against Syria, which they blamed for his murder.

As soon as the funeral of Gemayel, a member of one of Lebanon's leading Christian families, ended, the war on the airwaves began.

Saad al-Hariri, Rafik's son, told a cheering crowd from behind bullet-proof glass: ''They (pro-Syrians) said you were an illusion of a majority (but) we are truth and you (opposition) are illusions, we are freedom and you are illusions.'' In response, Hezbollah's al-Manar television issued a video clip giving its version of events.

A close-up of Thursday's funeral crowd with the ironic caption ''Majority'' appears. The camera then cuts to a scene of a much bigger Hezbollah rally in September, celebrating the group's war against Israel, with the caption ''Illusion''.

Shortly after Reuters witnesses reported Thursday's crowd in a central Beirut square as being in the tens of thousands, a Lebanese official called the Reuters bureau with the ''official'' number: ''one million, close to 1,100,000 attendees'', he said.

Lebanon's daily papers joined the numbers game, each giving its own view of the crowd size according to party affiliation.

Al-Mustaqbal, the Hariri family publication, dedicated half its front page to a wide-angle photograph showing a large number of protesters dwarfed by the towering mosque behind them.

Its headlines read: ''A second uprising bids farewell to the martyr Pierre Gemayel'' and ''One million chanted for (Emile) Lahoud to leave'', referring to the pro-Syrian president.

Not to be outdone, al-Akhbar, an anti-government daily close to Hezbollah, printed a close-up capturing only a few dozen people and said ''The crowd yesterday disappointed the March 14 coalition, seeming very tiny compared with what was expected''.

REUTERS BDP KP0854