Peres seeks coalition first, agreement later

Press, 29 August 1984, Page 11

Peres seeks coalition first, agreement later

NZPA-Reuter Jerusalem The Israeli Prime Minis-ter-designate, Mr Shimon Peres, says he and the Likud Party leader, Mr Yitzhak Shamir, are looking for ways to set up a national unity Government without first resolving all their outstanding differences. Speaking after a two-hour meeting with Mr Shamir yesterday, Mr Peres said there were still many disagreements between his Labour alignment and the Right-wing Likud, and several more meetings were needed. “We discussed a method by which the Government would be able to decide on issues over which there are differences of opinion... the problem is to set up a Government which will be able to function when both sides know there are issues over which there are differences,” he said. Messrs Peres and Shamir said some important agreements had been reached on the economy, national defence, and foreign affairs. They asked legal aides to draw up documents specifying those agreements and will meet again today. The President, Mr Chaim

Herzog, on Monday granted Mr Peres a second 21-day period in which to form a Government after Labour won 44 seats in the 120member Parliament in last month’s inconclusive election. Likud won 41 seats.

Mr Shamir, who is running Israel at the head of a caretaker Government, also spoke briefly to reporters after the meeting but said only that the talks had been held in a good atmosphere, agreement had been reached on several important issues, and more meetings would be needed. The two biggest stumbling blocks for setting up a unity Government are Jewish settlements in occupied Arab lands and which of the two party leaders will be the Prime Minister.

Mr Peres acknowledged last night that no progress had been made on settlements, which Labour wants to freeze and Likud to increase.

The focus of their talks on settlements had shifted from the issue itself to ways of governing together with such questions still to be worked out, he said.

Meanwhile Israel’s hardline former Defence Minis-

ter, Mr Ariel Sharon, was quoted yesterday as saying that the Kingdom of Jordan rightfully belonged to Israel and would one day be settled by Jews. “Maariv” newspaper said Mr Sharon,

a Likud Party member, made his remarks last week during a discussion with Labour Party leaders on Israeli settlement policy in the occupied West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan in 1967. “The East Bank of the Jordan River is ours, although it is not in our hands, just as east Jerusalem was before the Six Day War (in 1967),” Mr Sharon said.

Mr Peres refused to say whether any progress had been made on the leadership issue, but he implied that any unity Government would have to be made up of equal numbers of Likud and Labour ministers.

He has consistently rejected a Likud suggestion for a rotating leadership.