January 11, 2000
Web posted at: 2:02 a.m. EST (0702 GMT)

In this story: Newspapers call for resignation A war hero who wants peace RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- President Ezer Weizman said Monday he had no immediate plans to quit, despite growing calls for his resignation.

	MESSAGE BOARD
Mideast peace

Weizman said he will speak about revelations he received tens of thousands of dollars from a French millionaire friend once state attorney Edna Arbel finishes studying records that Weizman said his lawyer would hand to her.

Arbel is investigating allegations that Weizman, 75, accepted more than $450,000 from French businessman Edouard Saroussi from 1988, while he was a lawmaker and Cabinet minister, until he became president in 1993.

Weizman insists there is no corruption, that he's committed no offense by receiving a gift from a good friend which has no bearing on his public position or on Israeli society.

A public opinion poll showed a growing number of Israelis -- 43 percent -- want him to resign.

Joining the chorus of politicians and newspapers calling on Weizman to step down, Housing Minister Yitzhak Levy, head of Israel's rightist National Religious Party, told Israel Radio that the president should quit to preserve the dignity of the office.

Several newspapers have urged Weizman to quit. The Jerusalem Post said that by taking the money, he had brought a "strong scent of corruption" to his office.

These sentiments are echoed on Jerusalem's streets. "It is a disgrace," said one Israeli man. "I think the president should have the honor of resigning."

Another told CNN he thought Weizman had made a big mistake with the money and with his support for the peace process.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israeli minister of public security, said Weizman's behavior "brings many people to mistrust of the elites, of politics as a whole. And this is very dangerous.

"We seem to be fairly strong in applying the law. We are not as strong in assuming the centrality of democratic norms."

Weizman is also under fire for lobbying passionately for peace, ignoring the constraints of his largely ceremonial office. He went so far as to warn that if Israel rejects a peace deal with Syria, he would resign.

A war hero who's at the forefront of Mideast peace moves, Weizman visits every wounded soldier personally. Now, however, his popularity with the Israeli public is sorely tested.

Ben-Ami suggested Weizman should have come forward to the public and confessed as President Clinton did regarding his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.

To many observers, however, it's no longer a question of whether Weizman will leave office but when.

CNN Correspondent Jerrold Kessel and Reuters contributed to this report.