Israel’s President Moshe Katsav decided not to attend the opening of parliament, according to media reports.

The news comes just hours after police recommended that he face charges for rape and wire-tapping. A number of deputies had threatened to walk out of the Knesset if he attended.

Mr Katsav denies claims that he forced two female employees to have sex with him, along with all other allegations which police have been investigating. A formal decision on whether to prosecute him will be made by the Attorney General Menachem Mazuz.

Earlier, Israel’s Education Minister Yuli Tamir told reporters that she felt Mr Katsav would be wrong to attend the opening of the Knesset’s winter session: “He should avoid the embarrassment both to himself and to the institute of the presidency. He has done enough to embarrass us all and that is the right time for him, if not to resign then, to decide not to participate in public meetings anymore.” Mr Katsav’s brother, Lior, told Israel Army radio that the president had decided to stay away to protect the dignity of the Knesset. “We have no doubt of his innocence. We know he is being framed and he is being blamed of things that did not happen,” Lior Katsav added.

The post of president, to which Mr Katsav was elected for a seven-year term in 2000, is largely ceremonial. The 61-year-old father-of-five has rejected calls that he quit, but a reporter in Jerusalem says that could change if he is indicted.

As member a member of the Knesset, Mr Katsav is immune from prosecution, should the attorney general decide to prosecute him. However, parliamentarians are likely to seek to impeach him, lifting that immunity, if they feel that he has acted inappropriately.

The allegations against the president have shaken the Israeli political establishment, causing dismay and disillusionment among an already jaded Israeli public, our correspondent says.

There is a widespread sense of dissatisfaction, our correspondent says, following a swathe of scandals and the performance of Israel’s leaders during the recent war in Lebanon.

Although in the past a previous president and several prime ministers were embroiled in financial scandals and a former defence minister was convicted of sexual harassment, the charges Mr Katsav faces would be the most serious ever to be brought against a serving Israeli politician.

<B>Presidential pardons </B>

Israeli media reports have said that the case against Mr Katsav is based on complaints from up to 10 women.

Police searched the president’s home in August after allegations of sexual harassment emerged, and have questioned him repeatedly and seized documents during the investigation.

Following that investigation police issued a statement on Sunday saying: “There is sufficient evidence indicating that in several cases... the president carried out acts of rape, forced sexual acts, sexual acts without consent and sexual harassment.” Mr Katsav has said he is the victim of a “public lynching without trial or investigation”.

<B>Profile: Israeli Pres,ident Katsav</B>

Moshe Katsav was a little-known right-wing MP and former minister when he won the vote as Israel’s largely ceremonial president in 2000.

During his campaign for election, Israeli media made fun of him for his colourless, mild-mannered demeanour, and few believed he had a chance against former Prime Minister Shimon Peres. But he beat his more famous left-of- centre rival and became Israel’s first Iranian-born president and the first from the Likud party.

His six years in office have been marked by great turmoil and bloodshed in Israel’s dealings its Arab neighbours - the second Palestinian intifada erupted two months after he took office. But the presidency is not a position which confers political power on the incumbent and Mr Katsav has confined himself largely to speaking up for the interests of the Jewish state abroad on his many foreign tours – including to former fascist-ruled countries like Austria and Croatia. However, near the end of his seven-year term, he came under intense pressure to resign over the alleged rape and sexual harassment of some of his female co-workers. Mr Katsav denied any wrongdoing. Mr Katsav entered local politics in his home town, the modest former immigrant camp of Kiryat Malachi near Tel Aviv. In 1969, at the age of 24, the town elected him as Israel’s youngest mayor and eight years later he was elected to the Knesset for the Likud party.

He established himself as a power broker in the hawkish party rather than a star in his own right.

But he proved a competent administrator when he was made transport minister in the late 1980s, and he served as minister of tourism and deputy prime minister in Binyamin Netanyahu’s government elected in 1996.

Moshe Katsav was born in Iran in 1945 and he came to Israel with his parents in 1951 - a few years after its foundation. He still speaks fluent Farsi. He took the opportunity, at the funeral of Pope John-Paul II in 2005, to chat to his Iranian counterpart in Farsi.

By chance, he had been born in the same town as the then Iranian President Muhammad Khatami, Yazd in central Iran.

The conversation and a handshake which Mr Katsav said they shared triggered criticism in the domestic press of both countries.