  Population studies of EGRET gamma-ray sources indicate that there is a
distinctive population of bright sources at low galactic latitudes. The sources
have a distribution consistent with that of young galactic objects, with a
concentration toward the inner spiral arms. There is a subgroup that displays
strong variability with timescales from days to months. Following an earlier
suggestion by Kaufman Bernado et al. (2002), we explore the possibility that
these sources could be high-mass microquasars. Detailed models for the
gamma-ray emission that include inverse Compton interactions of electrons in
the relativistic jets and photons from all local fields (stellar UV photons,
synchrotron photons, soft X-ray photons from the accretion disk, and hard X-ray
photons from a corona) are presented. We conclude that microquasars are
excellent candidates for the parent population of the subgroup of variable
low-latitude EGRET sources.
