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Last update - 08:07 18/09/2008
Kadima primary: Key facts about Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
By Reuters
Tags: Tzipi Livni, Kadima 

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was officially declared the winner of the ruling Kadima party's primary early Thursday morning, making her the successor of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as party leader and likely the next premier. Here are some key facts about her:

  • Livni was born in Tel Aviv on July 8, 1958, and is a leading member of the Kadima party. She is the country's second woman foreign minister - the first was Golda Meir, who later served as prime minister from 1969 to 1974.

  • Livni, 50, has already launched a campaign to replace Olmert. She called in vain in 2007 for Olmert to step down following the release of the Winograd Report, which sharply criticized his handling of the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
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  • Elected to the Knesset as a member of the right-wing Likud party in 1999, she was one of Kadima's founding members alongside then prime minister Ariel Sharon. He left Likud in 2005 and formed Kadima with some rebels from Labor as he pushed through a plan to pull troops and settlers from Gaza.

  • A former operative with the Mossad, Livni had a career as a commercial lawyer before serving as justice minister under Sharon. Her husband, with whom she has two adult sons, is a prominent Tel Aviv entrepreneur.

  • Livni comes from a well-known ultranationalist family but has endorsed withdrawal from some occupied lands as a pragmatic way to preserve Israel's Jewish majority - if not to achieve a peace agreement.

  • At times outspoken, she once called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "irrelevant." Since the launch of the Annapolis peace process in November last year, Livni has been Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians.

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  • Olmert: Stepping down is painful, but I feel no bitterness
  • Shas: If Livni wants a coalition, she must comply with our demands
  • Kadima leadership race: What happens next
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