Profile of front-runner Mahmoud Abbas 

cctv.com 01-09-2005 12:00

There are seven candidates standing in the Palestinian election. But opinion polls show a clear lead for the current head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas. The latest poll gives him 65 percent support.

Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, is the candidate of the mainstream Fatah movement.

Abbas was born in Safad in 1935. His family sought refuge in Syria in 1948, when the first Arab-Israeli war broke out. During his stay in Syria, he obtained a law degree in the University of Damascus.

He later went to Moscow to pursue a PhD degree in history at the Oriental Institute, during which he showed interest in the study of Israel and concentrated on Zionism.

Abbas has devoted much of his life to struggle for an independent Palestinian state. He was a co-founder of the Palestine National Liberation Movement or Fatah and has been a member of Fatah's Central Committee since 1964.

In the 1970s, Abbas joined the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO. In 1977, he began contacts on behalf of the PLO with Israeli left-wingers.

In 1993, Abbas held 14 rounds of negotiations with Israel in the Norwegian capital Oslo, paving the way for the signing of the first peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel.

On September the 13th, 1993, Abbas and then Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres signed the Declaration of Principle on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, or the so-called Oslo Accords, in the US capital Washington.

In 1996, Abbas was elected general secretary of the PLO Executive Committee. He became the first Palestinian prime minister in March 2003, but resigned six months later over disputes with Yasser Arafat on security and administration issues.

He was named chairman of the P-L-O Executive Committee after the death of Arafat in November.

Editor:Hu Hang  Source:CCTV.com