Jerusalem - Scandal-dogged Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced that he will quit politics and resign as prime minister this fall rather than join a contest for the leadership of his own party.

    The announcement comes with Mr. Olmert trailing badly in the polls and facing a widening corruption investigation that police have said could soon lead to an indictment. In resigning, Mr. Olmert lashed out at the "ceaseless attacks of righteous people" which he said had begun as soon as he took office in 2006.

Marred by corruption investigations, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Wednesday that he would resign. (Photo: Eliana Aponte / AP)

    Mr. Olmert's withdrawal means that a Sept. 17 vote for the leadership of his centrist Kadima party will effectively be a two-person race between Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz. Since Kadima holds a plurality of seats in the Israeli parliament, the winner will get a chance to form the next government.

    "I will not take part in the primaries of the Kadima party," a drawn-looking Mr. Olmert told a hastily assembled news conference outside his official residence in Jerusalem. "When a new chairman is elected for the party, I will resign from my duties as prime minister to allow the chairman to create a new government."

    Opinion polls give the lead to Ms. Livni, a 50-year former Mossad agent, though Mr. Mofaz has closed the gap in recent weeks. Two other candidates, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, are also expected to run.

    Ms. Livni - who has been calling for Mr. Olmert's resignation for more than a year - sounded confident of victory in a radio interview she gave this week. "If the prime minister runs in the primaries, I'll beat him," she told Army Radio. "It seems unlikely that he will be a candidate, but that is his decision to make. I already made mine."

    Whoever wins the Kadima leadership will have to scramble to maintain the left-right coalition Mr. Olmert has kept together since taking office in early 2006. Polls show that the right-wing opposition Likud Party under former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu would win office if the coalition collapses.

    Mr. Olmert is currently under four separate police investigations, the most serious of which involves allegations that he accepted $150,000 in cash-stuffed envelopes from an American Jewish businessman while Mr. Olmert was serving as mayor of Jerusalem and later as a cabinet minister the government of Ariel Sharon.

    Police are also investigating claims that Mr. Olmert double-billed for government trips he took during the same period. Police say there is evidence that Mr. Olmert used the excess money to pay for family vacations.

    Mr. Olmert has repeatedly insisted that he is not guilty of anything. He said that "I will prove my innocence" once he is no longer prime minister.

    "I have full answers. I have complete answers," he told the press conference, adding that he would not conduct his defence through the media. "Those who are judging me now will have to deal with the truth."

    The calls for Mr. Olmert's resignation began in the wake of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war. A government panel found that Israel had gone to war "hastily" after the militant Hezbollah movement kidnapped two soldiers - a decision that left more than 1,200 people dead in the 33-day conflict, most of them Lebanese civilians. Thousands of Hezbollah rockets struck northern Israel, and hundreds of thousands of people on both sides were forced to flee their homes.

    Mr. Olmert's rise to power was almost as sudden as his downfall was protracted. The 62-year-old was propelled to the post of Acting Prime Minister in January 2006 after Mr. Sharon suffered a massive stroke that has left him a coma until this day.

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