Israeli Labour Party Rejects Sharon's Call

The leader of Israel's Labour party yesterday told Ariel Sharon he would not join a coalition government unless the prime minister agreed to shut Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and begin negotiations with the Palestinians.

Mr Sharon got more joy from the stridently secular party Shinui, whose leader, Yosef "Tommy" Lapid, said he was prepared to set aside his objections to joining a government with ultra-orthodox parties.

Mr Sharon, whose Likud party won 38 seats in the 120-member knesset in last month's general election, has sufficient support on the right to form a coalition with ultra-orthodox parties and an extremist party that advocates the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. But it is likely to be highly volatile and unstable.

He has six weeks to form a government and yesterday appealed to Labour to support him on the grounds of national unity, a concept popular with most voters. The Labour leader, Amram Mitzna, however, said after a meeting at the prime minister's office that he would not join the government out of a sense of "national responsibility".

The opposition says that entering an administration with Mr Sharon again would make it a "fig leaf" for the government's policies by stymying criticism at home and and providing cover for it abroad.

On Sunday, Labour's senior officials agreed that the party would not join the government until Mr Sharon pledged to implement policies such as closing Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, reallocating hundreds of millions of pounds from the settlers' budget to social programmes in Israel, and rapidly completing the "security wall" being built along the West Bank border. Labour also wants immediate and direct negotiations with the Palestinian leadership.

Shinui is proving more hungry for its first taste of power. It holds 15 seats in the knesset after its success in the election, enough to give Mr Sharon a healthy majority without him having to rely on the far-right parties that refuse to contemplate a Palestinian state.

Mr Lapid, who won much of his support by campaigning against the undue influence of ultra-orthodox parties, said that contrary to a pre-election pledge he would sit in government with the United Torah Judaism if the alternative was an unstable government.

"If Likud tell me that they can put together a coalition that will last for a while, but that they will have to give UTJ goodies, as much as I don't want them... I am prepared to swallow that," he said.