Israel's Barak wins no-confidence vote

The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, has survived a parliamentary vote of no-confidence.

The opposition fell eleven votes short of the sixty one they needed to bring down his minority government.

The right-wing Likud party had accused Mr Barak of making unacceptable concessions to the Palestinians at the failed Camp David peace summit.

But there was a shock result for Mr Barak earlier in the day when a key ally, Shimon Peres, was defeated in his bid to become Israeli president.

Mr Peres -- a former prime minister and Nobel peace prize winner -- had been widely expected to win, but was beaten by a relatively unknown Likud candidate, Moshe Katsav. The BBC Jerusalem correspondent says that with parliament going into a long recess, Mr Barak should now be free to resume peace talks with the Palestinians and to call elections in his own time.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service