UPDATE 1-EU
13/07/2004 18:14
(updates with Vitorino quote, background)
BRUSSELS, July 13 (Reuters) - European Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Antonio Vitorino said on Tuesday he would not seek the vacant leadership of Portugal's opposition Socialist party, depriving it of its most attractive figurehead.
"I have decided not to present my candidacy for the post of general secretary of the Socialist Party and instead to finish my mandate as a commissioner," he told Portuguese journalists in Brussels.
Vitorino, 47, a former deputy prime minister and defence minister who is Portugal's most popular politician, said he would be at his party's disposal once his Brussels term expires on October 31 but made clear it would not be as leader.
"There are some things I think I know how to do and other things that I humbly recognise I either don't know how to do or am not motivated to do," he said.
Portugal was thrown into political turmoil last month when centre-right Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso accepted the nomination to be the next president of the European Commission from November 1.
President Jorge Sampaio decided to appoint Barroso's successor as head of the conservative Social Democratic Party, Lisbon mayor Pedro Santana Lopes, as prime minister rather than call early elections as the Socialists had demanded.
Barroso's departure for Brussels left no room at the Commission for Vitorino, who had himself been a contender for the presidency of the EU executive because of his widely admired political and administrative skills.
That raised expectations Vitorino would go home early and take over the Socialist leadership from Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, who quit last week after failing to force a general election.
It was the second time he has turned down appeals to run for the party leadership.
Former Lisbon mayor Joao Soares, son of ex-president Mario Soares, and Jose Lamego, the former Portuguese envoy in Iraq, have said they will seek the party post.
Other potential candidates include ex-environment minister Jose Socrates, Jornal de Noticias daily reported.
Vitorino, a law professor and successful lawyer, did not say what he planned to do after he leaves Brussels.
But he told reporters: "It was a very difficult but well thought-out decision. The reasons behind it are my demands on myself and my respect for others." ((reporting by Marie-Louise Moller, writing by Paul Taylor; Reuters Messaging:
paul.taylor.reuters.com@reuters.net; +322 2876801))