Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak saw off a potential challenger at home as US-mediated peace talks with the Palestinians in Washington made progress toward a framework for a final agreement.
Nobel laureate Shimon Peres, Israel's leading dove, bowed out of the race for prime minister after failing to win the support of the Meretz party, leaving Barak to face opposition Likud party chief Ariel Sharon in a Feb. 6 poll.
Peres pledged to continue to work toward a regional peace which he says is threatened by uncompromising right-wing policies. "We must prevent Sharon's victory," he told Israeli radio.
Sharon, who master-minded Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, is reviled by Arabs.
Pollsters have said that Barak's chances of beating the hawkish Sharon are slim if he fails to clinch a peace deal with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat before the contest.
Polls now show Barak losing by 18 percentage points to Sharon, whose September visit to a Jerusalem shrine holy to Jews and Muslims sparked the current wave of violence that has left 337 dead, most of them Palestinians.
On Thursday Peres rejected an offer from Barak, under pressure from Meretz to patch up his feud with the elder statesman, to name him head of Israel's peace negotiations team. Instead Peres forced Meretz to vote on his candidacy.
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