JERUSALEM: Palestinian election frontrunner Mahmud Abbas said yesterday that he believed there was an excellent opportunity to reach peace with Israel if he is elected president this weekend.

"If I win the elections, that will be an excellent opportunity for peace," Abbas said in an interview with the Israeli daily Maariv.

"I will act to implement the roadmap in full. This plan presents all the demands - ours and Israel's - to achieve peace.

"We intend to do our share in full, and we hope that the Israeli side too will meet our demands."

The internationally-backed roadmap peace plan, which targets the creation of a Palestinian state this year, has made next to no progress since its launch in 2003 amid mutual recriminations.

Also yesterday, Israel's Supreme Court turned down a petition by the Palestinian Authority to allow thousands of prisoners held by Israel to vote in the January 9 presidential election, a courts authority spokesman said.

Israeli lawyer Zvi Rish filed the motion in Jerusalem on Monday after Israel said it would not allow the more than 7,000 prisoners to help choose a successor to Yasser Arafat.

The spokesman said the court rejected the appeal.

"Israel will not be able to prepare for voting by prisoners in so short a time," the Israeli YNEt news website quoted Chief Justice Aharon Barak as ruling.

Hisham Abdel-Razik, the Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs said earlier this week participation in the election was a basic human right.

Militant groups such as the radical Islamist movement Hamas have reacted angrily to calls by Abbas to halt rocket attacks on Israeli targets from the Gaza Strip which usually elicit a hard-hitting response from the Israeli military.

In another development, a Palestinian who infiltrated a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip was killed early yesterday by Israeli soldiers who started a hunt for a second man, Israeli military radio reported.

(China Daily 01/07/2005 page8)