JERUSALEM: A party vote to choose a successor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will be a close race that may stall Middle East diplomacy and affect the nuclear standoff with Iran.

The two top contenders in the Sept 17 centrist Kadima party ballot are Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians, and Iranian-born Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former army chief.

Livni, 50, a former Mossad spy who would be the first woman premier since Golda Meir in the 1970s, has the edge in polls, with one on Thursday giving her a 21 point lead over Mofaz.

But such surveys have been wrong before, especially on party primaries. Analysts see a more open race, amid signs of mounting support among Kadima members for Mofaz – seeking to become the first Israeli prime minister of non-European descent.

Whoever wins could take weeks to build a new government leaving Israel, and the US-brokered talks with Palestinians, in political limbo, with Olmert staying on as caretaker leader.

There is also a possibility that neither candidate would actually end up becoming prime minister.

Analysts say both Livni and Mofaz, lacklustre speakers with limited political experience, may fail to piece together a new coalition among rival religious and left-wing parties.

If that happens, parliament could step in and call a snap election. That could be held early in the new year.

Olmert, who has pledged to step down after months of police investigations into graft allegations, would remain caretaker.

But, like the outgoing US president George W. Bush, sponsor of the latest round of peace negotiations with the Palestinians, he would be a lame duck, bereft of lasting political clout.

“It’s a part of a national soap opera that has taken hold of Israeli politics,” said political scientist Orit Galili-Zucker, of Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, of the political stalemate spurred by Olmert’s slow-motion departure.

The Kadima contest has garnered limited public interest so far. Neither taciturn candidate seems capable of riveting an audience and only a fraction of Israelis can vote – an estimated 70,0000 party members, one per cent of the population.There are no stickers or posters on public display, no jingles on the airwaves, little advertising and the candidates have kept their public rallies to a minimum.

When they do speak, both Livni and Mofaz tend to put a hawkish spin on their support hitherto for peacemaking with Palestinians, mindful their political futures are also clouded by the rising popularity of rightist leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

Opinion polls show Netanyahu, a former prime minister, could defeat either Livni or Mofaz if an election were held soon.

Mofaz touts his military record, a message with some resonance in a country that has seen half a dozen wars in the past 60 years. As defence minister several years ago, he oversaw moves to crush a Palestinian uprising in occupied territory.

He takes a tough stance on halting his native Iran’s nuclear programme, which the West says seems destined to produce atomic weapons, despite Iranian denials. Israel is widely assumed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal at the moment.

If he becomes prime minister, Mofaz could escalate Israeli pressure for action to decide the nuclear standoff. He said recently an Israeli military strike on Iran may be “inevitable.”

As a boyhood immigrant from Tehran, Mofaz has built a strong following among fellow immigrants, many of whom are enthused by the prospect he could become the first Israeli of Sephardic, or Middle Eastern, origin to attain the job of prime minister.

Some Israelis blame the popularity of generals for a shortage of women candidates for high office. Livni may be the first woman in decades to overcome this disadvantage.

“There’s a struggle between Israel’s civilian and military needs,” Galili-Zucker, the political scientist, said. “There are those who say that if we are making peace, better a general should do it than a woman.”

Livni climbed the political ranks as a confidante of former prime minister Ariel Sharon, joining him in bolting from Likud in 2005 to found Kadima when Sharon pulled troops out of Gaza.

As foreign minister, Livni is Israel’s main negotiator with the Palestinians, but she has sought to toughen the image of peacemaker to compete against Mofaz, and in time, Netanyahu.

In remarks to reporters last week, Livni cautioned against racing to a peace deal with Palestinians as Washington wants to do by January, warning it could lead to possible violence if both sides’ expectations weren’t met. Though Livni leads Mofaz in opinion polls, some analysts say a contingent of rightists in Kadima could help sway the vote in his favour. Israeli media say several thousand party members also belong to Netanyahu’s rightist Likud party.—Reuters