Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called opposition Labor party leader Shimon Peres yesterday to start talks on forming a coalition government, a government source said.
Sharon telephoned Peres after winning backing from his own Likud party late Thursday for Labor to take part in a new national unity coalition government.
"Negotiations should begin at the beginning of next week after the Labor leadership give them the green light Saturday evening," the close aide to Sharon told reporters.
The adviser said that Sharon was also yesterday expected to invite the two ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism to join.
Members of the right-wing Likud's central committee late Thursday approved a proposal by Sharon to open negotiations with the main opposition Labor party and ultra-Orthodox parties about joining a new broad-based coalition.
The vote meant that Sharon kept his controversial plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip on track without the need for new elections.
Sharon, without a parliamentary majority for the last six months, had warned he would have no option but to call early elections if he was not allowed to bring the center-left Labor party into a national unity government.
Such a scenario would almost certainly have derailed the tight timetable for his so-called disengagement plan which should see all 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza uprooted from their homes by September of next year.
The victory is no guarantee that Sharon's government will remain in power and evacuate the 8,000 settlers from Gaza next summer as planned. But a defeat would have been a disaster for Sharon, and the pullout could have been jeopardized.
If Sharon can forge the coalition he wants, he will have political partners who support the pullout.
"This will put him in a strong position for the Gaza disengagement," said Mark Heller, a political analyst at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.
While Israeli governments are notoriously unstable and prone to collapse, Heller said he believed the coalition envisioned by Sharon would have a decent chance of remaining in place until the next election is scheduled, in late 2006.
Sharon's plan calls for withdrawing all settlers and soldiers from Gaza while seeking to strengthen Israel's hold on West Bank settlements.
As ballots were being cast on Thursday, Sharon warned that rejection of his plan would lead to new elections, which few Israelis want.
"Either Israel can move forward, or it can regress and embark upon an election campaign," he told Israeli television.
The current government rests on just the 40 Likud members in the 120-seat Parliament. To regain a majority, Sharon plans to court the Labor Party, headed by Shimon Peres. Labor and an allied party have 21 seats, which would give Sharon the bare minimum needed for a majority.
Gaza remains volatile. Israeli troops killed at least three Palestinians in two shootings, one on Wednesday night and the second on Thursday morning, according to the Israeli military and Palestinian medical officials.
In both instances, the soldiers fired on Palestinians who were in a forbidden zone for Palestinians along the Gaza-Egyptian border, the military said.
Israel carried out two airstrikes on Thursday, the first in weeks. In the first attack, a drone fired a missile at a wanted Palestinian militant, Jamal Abu Samhadna, as he was traveling in a car in southern Gaza, near Rafah. He was wounded along with two bodyguards.
Israel's military said Abu Samhadna, a leader in the Popular Resistance Committees, was responsible for many attacks against Israeli targets. The group vowed retaliation for the air strike.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS