JERUSALEM — Israel's beleaguered President Ezer Weizman will resign within six weeks, his top aide said Saturday, three days after the attorney general said that he improperly accepted gifts while in public office.
Weizman has informed Prime Minister Ehud Barak of his decision, the aide, Arieh Shumer, said.
Weizman, 76, has said he will resign sometime this year, citing ill health and the implications of a police investigation into more than $300,000 in gifts that he took from French millionaire Edouard Sarousi between 1988 and 1993, while he was a legislator and Cabinet minister. The president says the money was a personal gift.
Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein on Wednesday announced that he was closing the investigation, but only because the statute-of-limitations on bribery charges had run out, and police did not find enough evidence to indict Weizman for malfeasance in office.
Rubinstein, however, said, "There was clear impropriety in receiving the money."
Calls for the president's resignation reached a crescendo following Rubinstein's report.
Weizman, a former air force commander and defense minister, is serving his second five-year term, due to expire in 2003. He said he had planned to retire May 10, which is Israel's Independence Day, but postponed that decision until Rubinstein issued his final report.
Weizman, the Jewish state's first Israeli-born president, has annoyed politicians from both left and right by bluntly and publicly letting them know when he disagreed with how they were running the country. Yet many Israelis felt his straight-talking, shoot-from-the-hip style represented their pushy, boisterous society.
Cabinet Minister Shimon Peres, a former prime minister and Nobel Peace laureate, is a leading candidate for the post of president, which is mostly ceremonial. The opposition Likud Party is expected to nominate lawmaker and former minister Moshe Katzav as its candidate.
The president is chosen by an anonymous vote in the Knesset, Israel's parliament.