Israel's troubled opposition Labour Party has re-elected ageing former leader Shimon Peres as its temporary chairman.
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Shimon Peres
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Mr Peres (79) who won a Nobel prize for a peace accord with Palestinians a decade ago but never a general election, took 49.2 percent in Labour's Central Committee vote, easily beating two rivals. At least 40 percent was required for victory.
Mr Peres will resume the helm of his left-wing party until June 2004 when a permanent chairman is to be elected to lead Labour against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
right-wing Likud in the next scheduled
general election in 2007.
Many expect Mr Peres to try to lead his party back into Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government, restoring an unusual partnership that fell apart last November after 18 rocky months, sparking an election in which Mr Sharon handedLabour its worst defeat in Israel's history.
"I was chosen because of my deep belief that this party will be restored to its former glory, its historic place," said Mr Peres after Labour's central committee gave him 631 votes, or 49 per cent.
Former Cabinet minister Ephraim Sneh received 359 votes and relative unknown Danny Atar got 281, with and 11 blank ballots in the official count.
The former prime minister has far more prestige abroad than at home. The peace process he championed dissolved into violence 33 months ago and is now discredited in the eyes of many Israelis, and his penchant for parliamentarymanoeuvring and repeated election losses have also brought him a measure of ridicule.
He ran for prime minister five times and never won outright, and in 2000 he lost to a Likud backbencher, Moshe Katsav, in a parliamentary vote for the largely ceremonial post of Israeli president.
After one defeat, facing jeers at a party convention, Peres recounted his achievements and rhetorically demanded, "Am I a loser?" only to hear cries of "Yes! Yes!"
Despite his dismal electoral record, Peres has managed to remain an almost titanic figure in the dovish Labour Party, which favours a withdrawal from most of the West Bank and Gaza territories Israel occupied in the 1967 war.
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