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Israel’s beleaguered prime minister, Ehud Olmert, threw his country and the Middle East into political turmoil last night when he announced he was resigning after months of mounting pressure over corruption allegations.
Olmert said he would step down in September after his Kadima party has chosen a new leader. The main candidates are Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, a pragmatic centrist, and Shaul Mofaz, transport minister but a hawk on national security issues, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the ongoing, though faltering, negotiations with the Palestinians.
Last night’s announcement came as a surprise but hardly a shock, given the accumulating weight of comment that he could not go on in the face of a slew of police and judicial inquiries.
“I will step aside properly in an honourable and responsible way, and afterwards I will prove my innocence,” Olmert told reporters from a podium outside his Jerusalem office. “I want to make it clear – I am proud to be a citizen of a country where the prime minister can be investigated like a regular citizen. It is the duty of the police to investigate, and the duty of the prosecution to instruct the police. The prime minister is not above the law.”
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, deeply pessimistic about peace since talks were relaunched at Annapolis in the US last November, are likely to be indifferent to his departure, though Olmert forged personal ties with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and Fatah leader. Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said: “It’s true that Olmert was enthusiastic about the peace process, and he spoke about this process with great attention but this process has not achieved any progress or breakthrough.”
A spokesman for Abbas said last night that the Palestinian president considered Olmert’s decision an “internal Israeli matter”, adding: “The Palestinian Authority deals with the prime minister of Israel, regardless if he is Olmert or somebody else.”
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