JERUSALEM, July 15: Israeli elder statesman and Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres was sworn in as president on Sunday, crowning an unparalleled career lasting more than half a century.“I swear to be loyal to the state of Israel and its laws and to carry out my duties with conscience,” Peres pledged before parliament, bidding goodbye to a chamber where he has sat for 48 years.

Peres took the oath of office less than three weeks shy of his 84th birthday, replacing disgraced Moshe Katsav in the largely ceremonial post for a seven-year term as Israel's ninth president.

His landslide election as president by the Knesset was the first vote for a top post that he has won.

“Shimon Peres is one of the most important figures in Israel over the past 60 years,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, leader of Peres's centrist Kadima party, said at the weekly cabinet meeting ahead of the ceremony.

—AFP