JERUSALEM -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday announced that he will not seek re-election next year, citing a lack of U.S. support for his conditions for resuming peace talks with Israel.

Although he said the decision "is not up for debate," it was widely interpreted as a tactical gamble to win Israeli concessions and rally support among Palestinians. Mr. Abbas has groomed no successor and, because of uncertainty over whether elections will occur, could end up staying indefinitely in his post.

The 74-year-old leader, visibly tense, spoke on television hours after the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee heard his decision in a closed-door meeting and urged him to reconsider.

Word of his plans, leaked by aides earlier in the day, had prompted Israeli President Shimon Peres and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to telephone him with the same advice.

The careful phrasing in Mr. Abbas' speech appeared to leave room for a change of heart. "I have told our brethren in the PLO ... that I have no desire to run in the forthcoming election," he said. "I hope they understand this position of mine."

Mr. Abbas has been frustrated by the United States' inability to secure a halt to Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements on West Bank land that the Palestinians want for a future state.

U.S.-brokered peace talks broke off in December, and Mr. Abbas has refused to resume them until Israel agrees to a settlement freeze. Aides said he began speaking of stepping down after the administration in recent weeks backed away from its insistence on a freeze and urged the two sides to settle their differences on the issue at the negotiating table.

President Barack Obama telephoned Mr. Abbas late last month, the aides said, to reassure him of Washington's commitment to a peace accord.

But days later, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a stop in Jerusalem, applauded Israel's offer to restrain settlement growth, without halting it altogether. On Wednesday, she sought to counteract Arab anger over those comments by saying in Cairo that the administration has "a very firm belief that ending all settlement activity, current and future, would be preferable."

In his speech, Mr. Abbas said the growth of settlements "month after month, year after year, .... compromises the credibility of negotiations" and "ruins all peace efforts."

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