Abbas says he won’t run in January elections

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinian president said Thursday that he does not want to run for another term in elections January, blaming a stalemate in Mideast peace talks on Israel and the United States.

In a televised speech to the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas said he has told his “brothers” in the Fatah movement of his “desire not to run in the upcoming elections.”

Abbas' careful wording left room for the possibility that he could be persuaded to change his mind, especially if he perceives the United States as backing his position on demanding an end to Israeli construction in West Bank settlements.

The Palestinian leader's decision, reported earlier in the day by his aides, set off a flurry of calls from regional leaders: The presidents of Egypt and Israel, the king of Jordan and Israel's defense minister urged him to change his mind.

About 300,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, which Israel captured in the Mideast war in 1967. The Palestinian government says these settlements take up large chunks of its hoped-for state, undermining the dream of independence. Also, about 180,000 Israelis live in Jerusalem neighborhoods built around the eastern sector of the city, which Palestinians claim for their capital.

In his speech Thursday, Abbas said that at first, he was encouraged by the Obama administration's policy, but then “we were surprised by its embracing of the Israeli position.”

He said settlement construction must stop, but “Israel and especially its current government rejects this.”

Abbas has threatened before not to run for re-election in the balloting Jan. 24.

Last month, Abbas told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that he would not run but recanted after President Obama called him and expressed commitment to Mideast peacemaking, Abbas' office said.

In the following days, Clinton sought to clarify the American position, first offering warm praise for Israel's offer to limit settlement construction in the West Bank, then telling Arab leaders that the United States wants to see this construction stopped “forever.”

After Abbas' speech Thursday, Clinton praised his leadership in working toward the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. She didn't say whether she would try to persuade Abbas to stay on. “I look forward to working with President Abbas in any new capacity to help achieve this goal,” she said.

Abbas' decision aside, it is not clear elections will be held at all. Abbas' West Bank government does not control Gaza, which the Islamic militant group Hamas seized in June 2007. Hamas has said it would not participate in elections.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Abbas' reluctance to run for re-election was “a message of reproach to his friends, the Americans and the Israelis.”

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