Israel heads for coalition

Press, 7 September 1984, Page 6

Israel heads for coalition

NZPA-Reuter Tel Aviv Israel’s two main parties say they hope to complete the tortuous task of forming a bipartisan coalition Government today and to start tackling the nation’s severe economic and political problems next week.

The Prime Minister-desig-nate, Shimon Peres, of the Labour Party, and the caretaker Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, of the Likud bloc, said after two meetings they had overcome all the main obstacles.

Mr Peres, who will serve as Prime Minister for the first 25 months of the coalition and then hand over the office to Mr Shamir for a similar period, said he hoped the new Government would seek a Parliamentary vote of confidence next week.

Mr Shamir generally agreed but was more cautious. “I don’t think any real obstacles remain,” he told reporters. “But you can never know.” Sub-committees from both parties are hammering out details of the new Government’s policies and distribution of portfolios. Any differences are passed on to Mr Peres and Mr Shamir for final settlement.

Decisions made by the two leaders must still be approved by their parties before being submitted to Parliament. But Labour and Likud representatives said yesterday they did not expect any : insurmountable difficulties. Labour’s Left-wing faction, Mapam, has threatened to break off its 15-year alliance, but Mr Peres and his colleagues have taken little notice. “The economic and political situation are too serious and there' is no alternative to a National Unity Government,” Uzzi Baram, a Labour Party negotiator, told reporters. Among the array of problems facing any new Government are a 400 per cent annual inflation rate and the future of Israeli forces in Lebanon. Neither Labour nor Likud received a majority in last July’s General Election and both scrambled to line up support from the 13 smaller parties represented in Parliament.

They agreed to get together only after it became apparent that neither could muster enough support for a narrow-based Government from the smaller parties.