Abbas says not to run for January re-election

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday that he had no wish to seek re-election at a presidential poll he has called for January and that he was not ready to debate the issue.

In a speech broadcast live from his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the 74-year-old PLO leader, who replaced the late Yasser Arafat five years ago, said: "I have told our brethren in the PLO ... that I have no desire to run in the forthcoming election."

Mahmoud Abbas says the stalemate in peace negotiations with Israel prompted his decision not to run again.

He charged the U.S. with backtracking on its Mideast policy and refusing to press Israel to freeze construction in its West Bank settlements.

Officials from Abbas' Fatah Party say they have no leading candidate to replace him.

The Palestinian leader announced his plans earlier at a meeting of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the occupied West Bank.

I have told our brethren in the PLO ... that I have no desire to run in the forthcoming election

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

"The president insists on not running in the upcoming election," an official who attended the meeting said earlier.

But senior Abbas aide Yasser Abd Rabo said the committee's members were still trying to persuade him to run.

Abbas had called for the January election last month after failing to reach a unity deal with rival Islamist group Hamas, which rejects any peace moves with Israel.

Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 and wrested control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Abbas a year later. It has said it will not take part in parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for Jan. 24 in the absence of a unity deal with Abbas' Fatah faction.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Abbas's decision whether or not to run was "internal Fatah business."

Abbas has rejected U.S. calls to resume peace negotiations with Israel, saying he was sticking by his demand that Israel first halt all settlement expansion under a 2003 U.S.-backed peace road map.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who met Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, said Palestinians should enter peace talks first and resolve the settlement issue later.

Egypt also called on Wednesday for a rapid start to final negotiations to settle the six-decade-old conflict.

Netanyahu has agreed to limit construction in settlements in the West Bank, territory Israel captured in a 1967 war, rather than a total freeze. He says Israel must accommodate the "natural growth" of Jewish families in the settlements.

Another Palestinian official said Abbas made his decision because of the "stagnation in the peace process and the continuation of (Israeli) settlement activities."

The president insists on not running in the upcoming election

PLO official