Chretien to step down in 2004

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has said he will not seek a fourth term and plans to leave office in February 2004.

The announcement yesterday at a hastily arranged news conference came at a Liberal Party caucus meeting in Quebec, where Mr Chretien faced calls by supporters of rival Paul Martin to state clearly if he would run for a fourth consecutive term in an election that must take place by the end of 2005.

Mr Chretien said he needed more time to complete his government agenda, and would leave office in February 2004.

"At that time my work will be completed and my successor will be chosen," he said. "I will not run again."

The decision was intended to end a growing rift in the party that has dominated Canada in recent months.

Mr Chretien said it was the "best way to bring back unity, to end the fighting and to resume interrupted friendships".

Mr Chretien, 68, is the longest-serving Western leader after winning three victories for the Liberal Party.

But he faced increasing problems in his ninth year in power since first becoming Prime Minister in 1993.

Opinion polls say his popularity is waning, especially after Mr Martin left or was pushed from the Cabinet in June.

Opposition parties have hammered the government with accusations of cronyism, forcing Mr Chretien to revise ethical guidelines.

With Mr Martin openly challenging him for the party leadership, Mr Chretien faced a growing chorus to step down to avoid a showdown at next year’s Liberal Party convention.

In a political career approaching four decades, Mr Chretien has relied on hard work, good instincts and street-fighter skills honed from childhood - other boys would tease him for the birth defect that left him deaf in one ear and with a misshapen smile - to climb up the ranks of the Liberal Party and Canadian government.

Referring to himself as the "little man from Shawinigan", a working-class Quebec town, he served under Pierre Trudeau in several Cabinet posts before defeating Mr Martin for the party leadership in 1990 and becoming Prime Minister three years later.

Tall and gruff, but also disarming, Mr Chretien never looks entirely comfortable practising his lifelong passion.

While a master tactician in Parliament, he is lampooned regularly for an awkward command of both official languages, English and French.

In his 1985 autobiography Straight From the Heart, Mr Chretien foreshadowed his current political difficulty by writing: "In politics, the exit can be sometimes more difficult than the entrance."