Israel's attorney general Menachem Mazuz has decided to indict Katsav on charges of rape, indecent acts and obstruction of justice.
JERUSALEM: Moshe Katsav, facing rape charges in the most serious criminal case against an Israeli leader, is a bland bureaucrat who rose from obscurity to assume the nation's top, if largely ceremonial post.
A justice ministry official said on Tuesday that Israel's attorney general Menachem Mazuz has decided to indict Katsav on charges of raping four women, indecent acts and obstruction of justice.
Katsav has resisted pressure to resign since police announced in October they had uncovered enough evidence to charge him following months of investigation and interrogation.
The married father of five, who once said he was the victim of a witchhunt, faces the prospect of becoming Israel's second consecutive president forced out by scandal, ending a lacklustre career in disgrace and perhaps prison.
His predecessor, the late Ezer Weizman, was forced to resign in 2000 after revelations he received around $450,000 as "gifts" from French millionaire Edouard Saroussi in the 1980s, when Weizman was an MP and minister.
A two-time cabinet minister who grew up in difficult times after emigrating from Israel's arch-enemy Iran, Katsav was elected by MPs in July 2000 as the first conservative president and the first born in an Islamic country.
Seen as a relative outsider, the 61-year-old fluent Persian speaker upset frontrunner Shimon Peres, an ex-premier and Nobel peace laureate.
Considered a competent administrator within the hawkish Likud party and as tourism and transport minister in the 1980s and 1990s, Katsav nevertheless emerged a relative moderate after assuming his ceremonial position.
He offered to hold talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and insisted the late Yasser Arafat had a role to play in the peace process at a time when the former Palestinian leader was spurned by Likud prime minister Ariel Sharon.
Nevertheless he used his presidency to play the protocol card abroad, making Israel's "right to self-defence" during the second Palestinian uprising and warnings of rising anti-Semitism a constant theme of such trips.
He was the first Israeli head of state to visit Austria, once annexed by Adolf Hilter as part of Nazi Germany, and Croatia, where an estimated 75 percent of its 40,000 Jews were killed during the World War II Holocaust.
During a visit to Budapest in April 2004, police said they foiled an attack on a Jewish museum, believed to be the Holocaust memorial that Katsav was to open, but the prosecution later dismissed the charges.
At the funeral of Pope John Paul II in April 2005, Katsav introduced himself to the then president of Iran, who was born in the same town.
Katsav said he shook Mohammad Khatami's hand and spoke to him in Persian, also greeting Assad during the traditional "exchange of peace".
In February 2002, he invited Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz to Jerusalem to unveil an Arab peace initiative, or instead offered to visit him in Riyadh, although neither trip ever took place.
Katsav has rigorously defended Israel's West Bank separation barrier, parts of which were denounced as illegal in a non-binding ruling from the UN International Court of Justice and slammed by the Palestinians as a land grab.
One of eight children, Katsav was born in December 1945 and arrived in Israel three years after the 1948 war of independence in what were difficult early years as a young immigrant in a fledgling Jewish state.
He lived in the modest Kiryat Malachi camp for new arrivals south of Tel Aviv, which later developed into a fully-fledged town, and became the first local resident to attend Israel's Hebrew University.
In 1969, Kiryat Malachi residents elected the 24-year-old student as their mayor, Israel's youngest. In 1977, he joined parliament and quickly entrenched himself in the Likud party.
Studying economics and history, he taught to help support his family, before rising to serve as chairman of Likud in the Knesset in the mid-1990s.
Married to Gila and the father of five children, Katsav was Israel's first president sworn in for a seven-year renewable term in the largely ceremonial post.
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