Netanyahu confirms poll comeback

Netanyahu: Lagging behind Sharon in the latest opinion poll

BERLIN, Germany -- Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he plans to run for office again in the next general election.

Netanyahu, a right-wing rival in the Likud Party to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was defeated at the polls in 1999 by Labor's Ehud Barak after three years as prime minister.

But he has never made a secret of his hope of a political comeback and plans to stand at the next national poll, which is expected late next year.

"I will run when we have new elections," Netanyahu said in Berlin after a speech to the Aspen Institute think-tank on Friday.

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His announcement came on the day that a poll in Israel's Maariv newspaper showed 48 percent of Israelis prefer Sharon as Likud leader to 23 percent for Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, 52, has been a vocal critic of Sharon, who succeeded him as leader of the Likud Party.

Earlier this month Netanyahu presented his most public challenge to Sharon over the issue of Likud's policy towards a state for Palestinians.

Sharon had said he was willing to support Palestinian statehood as a condition of any future peace deal.

But the party's central committee voted by almost 60 percent for Netanyahu's proposal which reaffirmed Likud's opposition to a Palestinian state.

"If I wanted to be prime minister, I would have been prime minister," Netanyahu told CNN after the vote.

"People are focusing on the personal of who's up, who's down. It's not important. It really isn't. Focus on the issues," he said.

Sharon described Netanyahu's move as "trickery."

Netanyahu, who was elected prime minister in 1996, has been a major voice on the Israeli right pushing Sharon to take a harder line against the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Yasser Arafat.

In his CNN interview, he said in reaffirming their opposition to an independent Palestinian state, Likud members were reacting to concerns that such an entity would threaten Israel's security.