Shimon Peres was elected Israel's president on Wednesday, winning a national honour that crowns the political career of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and 83-year-old statesman. Parliament, which picks the head of state, chose Peres by a margin of 86 to 23 in a second round of voting in which he ran as the sole candidate, after the two other contenders dropped out and threw their support behind the deputy prime minister.
Peres, who has never won a national election outright in Israel but has served twice as prime minister, had taken 58 ballots in the first round, short of the 61 needed for victory.
His election to the largely ceremonial post would mean he must step down as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's deputy and take him out of the running to succeed him should the embattled leader quit over a report criticising his handling of last year's Lebanon war. Born in Poland, Peres immigrated before Israel achieved statehood and rose through Labour's ranks as an ally of the country's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
As defence minister in the late 1950's Peres secured a secret deal with France to launch an Israeli nuclear programme that the Jewish state has reportedly used to produce atomic weapons, though Israel doesn't comment on this.
He served as prime minister from 1984 to 1986 then again in 1995 after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, but never won an election for the position decisively.
Peres won a Nobel prize alongside Rabin and the late Yasser Arafat for a 1993 interim peace deal, Israel's first accord with the Palestinians that led to the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
In 2005 Peres bolted Labour to help found the centrist Kadima party alongside Olmert and Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister in a coma since suffering a stroke the following year.
Although Olmert endorsed his candidacy, some last-minute backroom manoeuvring on the part of rightist and religious lawmakers cast some doubt as to whether Peres would finally win. But after the first round of voting Colette Avital of the centre-left Labour Party, who polled 21 votes, and right-wing candidate Reuven Rivlin, with 37, announced they were quitting the race and urged their supporters to back Peres.
Peres will be sworn in next month when Moshe Katsav, formally ends his seven-year term of office. Katsav is on a leave of absence since legal authorities said in January they intend to charge him with raping an employee and sexually assaulting several other women who worked for him.