Peres wins party backing for Israel presidency bid

JERUSALEM, May 28 (Reuters) Elder statesman Shimon Peres today won the backing of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Kadima party for a bid to become Israel's next president.

Parliament will elect the country's president on June 13 and political commentators are predicting an open race, with Peres vying for the office along with candidates from Israel's left and right wings.

''I spoke to Vice Premier Shimon Peres and told him I would support his candidacy for president,'' Olmert said at a meeting of Kadima legislators, who later endorsed the 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

If he becomes president, Peres, a Kadima leader, would effectively take himself out of the running to replace Olmert should the prime minister resign in response to an inquiry's scathing criticism of his conduct of last year's Lebanon war.

An Israel Radio poll showed 64 per cent of Israelis wanted Peres to become president. Eighteen percent supported Collette Avital of the centre-left Labour Party and seven percent preferred Reuven Rivlin of the right-wing Likud party.

Olmert, whose popularity rating is in single digits, has vowed to stay on and correct failings cited in the Winograd Commission's interim report. The panel is to present a final report in August that could determine his political fate.

Peres, a former prime minister and architect of interim peace deals with the Palestinians in the 1990s, has spoken publicly of his desire to run for president. He is widely expected to announce his candidacy on Wednesday.

As a member of the Labour Party, Peres lost a 2000 bid for the presidency to Likud's candidate Moshe Katsav.

Israeli authorities have announced their intention to indict Katsav on suspicion he raped a former staff member and sexually assaulted three other women who worked for him.

Katsav, who has denied any wrongdoing and is on a leave of absence, cannot be charged under Israeli law until his term ends with the election.

Peres had been the favourite to win the presidency seven years ago but some of the legislators he counted as supporters turned against him in a secret ballot that commentators described as a settling of old grudges.

''I have no doubt that if he is elected president, (Peres) will restore the post to the stature and respect it deserves,'' Olmert said at the party meeting.

REUTERS SBA BST0102