Israel PM wins Likud party vote

TEL AVIV - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has triumphed in a Likud party vote, stalling a leadership challenge by rightist Benjamin Netanyahu, a party official said after the ballots were counted.

The official, citing final figures, said Likud's Central Committee voted against Netanyahu's motion to advance to November a party leadership election in protest at the Gaza pull-out Sharon championed.

The official, Micha Gabbai, put the margin of Sharon's victory at around 3 per cent.

The primary is slated for April.

Sharon's aides had said if the prime minister lost Monday's vote, he might bolt the Likud and create a centrist bloc capitalising on majority popular support for the withdrawal that Israel completed two weeks ago.

Netanyahu argued the pull-out, the first evacuation of Jewish settlements from land Palestinians want for a state, would only encourage militants, who claim the withdrawal as a victory, to step up attacks against Israel.

Sharon called the move out of Gaza an attempt to disengage from conflict with the Palestinians and leave occupied territory he said Israel had no chance of keeping under a future peace treaty.

But the 77-year-old Israeli leader has pledged to hold on forever to large settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank, where 245,000 Jews live isolated from 2.4 million Palestinians.

- REUTERS